Neal Shusterman Quotes

I simply don't understand authors that know everything before they write it; it seems so cold blooded. I think it's lovely when the story takes over and goes somewhere else.

I usually start with an ending, then outline high points of things that happen, and kind of make up the rest as I go along. Occasionally, the characters surprise me, and I wonder how we got here. Other times, the characters are stubborn and won't do something I want them to in the story.

Although when I start a novel I know how it will begin and end, I like to let the people within the story take me on a journey between those points without having a fixed plan.

I mean one of the weird things about TV and one of the things that some actors don't like but I kind of dig is that you never know where you're headed, I mean you never know what the writer might think of next.

It can certainly happen that characters in more sophisticated stories can 'take over' as they develop and change the author's original ideas. Well, it certainly happens to me at times.

You set up the story, but the characters start talking, and they go places that you didn't expect. You have to follow.

If the novelist isn't surprised by where his book ends up, he or she probably hasn't written anything worth remembering.

When I write fiction, I have the illusion of being able to control these fictional worlds and these characters, and to make them say what I want them to say. Of course, the problem is that it is an illusion, and by the end of it you realize that you're not in control of it at all; the characters have taken over, and they're driving the vehicle.

I do better just letting the stories develop. I don't outline very well, and I can't follow it if I do. Once I've outlined it, why write the damn book?

I always have a rough outline, but I'm shocked at how little I actually follow it. Those characters keep doing things that I never expected. I think if I crept up to my keyboard and peeked, they'd be talking about things behind my back. Okay, that's a little paranoid and delusional... but just a little.

Even though 'Glee' is sometimes a hard road, I am very excited about writing a multi-year arc.

When I started the 'Broken Empire' trilogy, I thought it was a short story, and I didn't know the beginning, middle, or end of even that.

If you take a few days to write an outline, you're just making up scenes that you think will work, that you think will be interesting. But as you write it, other ideas occur - better ideas that have to do with what you're writing.

I always have a basic plot outline, but I like to leave some things to be decided while I write.

I like to sit down every day and not know where the book is going. I have no idea where the book is going to go or how it's going to end as I'm writing it.

There's this sense of excitement because you invent and control the characters. You decide whether they live or die. I find this type of creative process tremendously stimulating.

I prefer to surprise myself as I'm writing. I'm not interested in it if I already know where it's going. So I have only the most general sense of what I'm doing when I start a story. I sometimes have a destination in mind, but how the story is going to go from Point A to Point Z is something I make up as I go along.

The way I like to work is to attach personal experiences to what I'm doing, so it helps tremendously if I can write my own play under what the writer has written.

The moment comes when a character does or says something you hadn't thought about. At that moment he's alive and you leave it to him.

SOON was the first novel where I used a rough outline. Usually I have characters and an idea and write as a process of discovery. Like working without a net.

'For Whom the Bell Tolls' was a problem which I carried on each day. I knew what was going to happen in principle. But I invented what happened each day I wrote.

I always think I know the way a novel will go. I write maps on oversized art pads like the kind I carried around in college when I was earnest about drawing. I need to have some idea of the shape of the novel, where its headed, so that I can proceed with confidence. But the truth is my characters start doing and saying things I don't expect.

You start as an audience member and create a world you're interested in, and then you move into the telling of those stories, bringing what has interested you as an audience member.

You have to understand that while I pre-plot the meta story of a given book, I often have no idea of what will happen on the next page, let alone the next chapter. That's what makes it fun for me; I write the books the same way many people read them.

After a while, the character sort of took over.