Ann Turner Quotes

I like to be surprised. Fresh implications and plot twists erupt as a story unfolds. Characters develop backgrounds, adding depth and feeling. Writing feels like exploring.

Each story presents a mystery that has to be solved in the process of writing. When I'm at work on a story, I'm completely immersed in that world and in the lives of those characters; they're utterly real to me. Then, when I've completed the story, it all just falls away. The whole compulsion to understand is over.

When you write fiction, you have an ideal reader in your mind who's sort of you but smarter.

For me, the writing process is the same as the reading process. I want to know what happens next.

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.

I just try to write the best story I can, a story I would love to read, and hope that readers feel the same.

I don't know if anything I write will endure, but I do try to write it as a narrative that will not only challenge but also entice the reader into the lives of children.

Writing fiction is for me a fraught business, an occasion of daily dread for at least the first half of the novel, and sometimes all the way through. The work process is totally different from writing nonfiction. You have to sit down every day and make it up.

Personally, I believe in fiction because the stories I like are those with a beginning and an end.

In fiction, the reader will make jumps with you. If you can make the reader make that leap with you, it's a thrilling moment for everyone.

All I can guess is that when I write, I forget that it's not real. I'm living the story, and I think people can read that sincerity about the characters. They are real to me while I'm writing them, and I think that makes them real to the readers as well.

When I write fiction, I never try to deliver a message; I just want to tell a story. But I admit that I want the story to be memorable and the characters to touch the reader's heart.

My favorite novels allow me to imagine the characters afterward and what happened, and that I've witnessed a really great story, where the world goes on.

When I'm writing, I won't know whodunnit until maybe two thirds of the way through. Until then, I know as little as my detective. I just make it up as I go along. It's nerve-wracking, actually. You'll be half through and not know your conclusion. You worry one of these days the ending won't come. I'll be left with only two-thirds of a novel.

I get to use fiction as a way to work out my thinking and to delight readers in the process. I can't think of any deal that's better for me, and I'm always so grateful that readers have indulged me as I argue with myself in my stories.

The more stories I told, the more I found I wanted to tell. There was always something left unsaid. I got hooked by my own impulse of 'Well, what's gonna happen next?'

I began to ask two questions while I was reading a book that excited me: not only what was going to happen next, but how is this done? How is it that these words on the page make me feel the way I'm feeling? This is the line of inquiry that I think happens in a child's mind, without him even knowing he has aspirations as a writer.

Each book is a separate entity for me. When I'm writing it, I enter its world and inhabit its vocabulary. I forget, as it were, that I ever wrote anything else.

You get so caught up in what you're writing - action sequences tend to do that more than anything else because you're living it, and feeling for your characters.

Even if I never sold another book, I'd keep writing, because the stories are here, in my head. Stories that just need to be told. I love watching a plot unfold, and feeling the surprise when the unexpected happens.

I write books that will make 10 or 12 hours disappear, and hopefully they'll resonate with you for a few days, where you'll remember the characters and the story. That suits me fine; I am happy with that.

Definitely they write themselves. It's an amazing experience. It's like the characters have come alive and are sitting on my shoulder talking to me, telling me their tales.

With a novel, there is no hurrying it. You're constantly walking into the unknown.

I'm writing for my ideal reader, for somebody who's willing to take the time, who's willing to get lost in a new world, who's willing to do their part. But then I have to do my part and give them a sound and a voice that they believe in enough to keep going.

I'm just trying to write a good story, strictly from imagination. People just think it's random, they don't see the rewriting, phrasing of characters, choosing the words, bringing the world to light in which the characters live in. That creates an illusion that this is real.