Robin Hobb Quotes

A novel requires a certain kind of world-building and also a certain kind of closure, ultimately. Whereas with a short story you have this sense that there are hinges that the reader doesn't see.

I can move my characters through it easily, because I understand the background; I've really studied it.

I do novels a bit backward. I look for a situation, a milieu first, and then I wait to see who walks into it.

I could make up characters till the cows came home. Plot's what hard. Very hard.

Basically, fiction is people. You can't write fiction about ideas.

I'm big on story structure. I studied with John Truby, who mapped out story by means of moral wants and needs, and that's what I do. Hey, so does John Irving.

In order to deliver the emotional truth in the story, you have to include some of the literal truth.

My job is to help the functioning of the story, not to draw attention to myself, but to make my characters function within the story, to work for the benefit of the story, to make the whole thing work.

Settings are obviously important - and as a writer, you have to respect what was real at the time of the story you're writing. But the real key to success lies in finding the right characters to carry that story.

In a lot of ways, TV writing taught me how to be a good storyteller. I learned about dialogue, scenes, moving the plot forward.

Whenever you can manoeuvre your characters into a situation where they both have a good argument to make, you're on the right track.

What I have in advance are people I want to write about and a problem or problems that I see those people encountering and that I want to explore - it all proceeds sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph, and scene by scene.

When you're writing a novel - at least the way I write is I work from what I would call 'emotional atmosphere,' ambiance to ambiance.

With all of the qualities of the scene-setting, the dialogue, the place and time and the time and place in which your characters move. And I want to move with the characters, move with them and describe the world in which they are living.

It's always hard, when introducing readers to a new world/set of rules, not to lay it all out manual-style in the opening chapters but make sure to put the action and the characters at the front. If people don't become invested in them and in the story, the world in which it's set will become a burden.

As a writer, you have to put yourself in service to the character, get behind their eyes by delineating the world where the character develops. You have to listen to the character and see him inside his certain world to know what conclusions he would draw.

One of the challenges is creating characters. I am trying to compose my sentences to express epic events happening to ordinary people.

Everything you write makes you better. But if you really need a tip, here's one: a good story begins in opposition to its ending. That means you work out how it finishes first, and then begin the story as far away from that point - in terms of character development - as you can.

There is nothing that's been in any of my novels that, in my view, hasn't been either illuminating surroundings or defining a character or moving a plot.

My only conclusion about structure is that nothing works if you don't have interesting characters and a good story to tell.

Writing fiction is an act of imaginative empathy.

For me, 'The Hobbit' is an object lesson in storytelling, both in terms of characterization and story structure. It is an exemplar of storytelling in that regard.

I think all good short stories are about what it means to tell a good story.

I look for absurdly simple plots so that I can simply focus on the characters. Having an understanding of what dialogue's easy to say and hard to say - I think that that's helpful, too.

You have to look for story. That's obvious. If that's not on the page, you can forget it. But I also read whatever character I'm being offered. And if you can cut them out without it affecting the story, then I say no straight away.