Mark Twain Quotes

The trick to writing for people is, you have to be able to turn them on in your head. And know how they'd word something or how they'd inflect it.

I've had a lot of very positive feedback about those stories, and seem to have struck upon something that most people feel. I can also tap dance, and don't know many other authors who can.

If you are writing a story and trying to draw an audience to come and hear you tell it, it's got to in some way relate to them. Who wants to come and hear about your specific problems? It's not therapy - it's supposed to be a communal piece of entertainment.

Even though writing articles relies completely on truth, you still must tell an interesting story. You can't worry about people knowing who you are and whether or not they want to read your stories.

Possibly because I did start off as a journalist, my starting point has always been that you've got to keep an audience with you. Whatever you're doing, you always want a script to be a page-turner. It's very important never, ever, to feel above that.

I don't think people are ever going to a place where they're like, 'I'm over stories about character and love.'

I believe the most important thing you can do in any kind of novel is to make your reader want to go on with it and want to know what happens next.

But I care about the reader, and I'm trying to keep the reader's attention for as long as I can.

These guys at Fox knew that as a filmmaker, I could always tell different types of stories and each can emotionally connect to a universal audience.

I have to write for everyone. What really fascinates me is how you make films or make stories that can genuinely be shared by different groups.

The reason I think the shows I do are successful with a wider public is because they tap into something that's beyond dance and is about being told a story. That's what people want.

There comes a time in every writer's life when it becomes necessary to recognize what people really care about.

That's the secret to anything we write. You have to bring your experience to it. Otherwise, how do you expect anyone else to connect to it?

I like to write songs that people can identify with and sing along to.

If you're good enough to play a role with emotion and universal human elements, then you'll get others coming to you.

If you can connect with the audience emotionally, that's potent storytelling.

You must find the right voice (or voices) for the timbre that can convince a reader to give himself up to you.

Short stories can be rather stark and bare unless you put in the right details. Details make stories human, and the more human a story can be, the better.

I'm not saying I have to write a book that's ten times better than my counterparts, but I do think that I have to concentrate my efforts on writing something that will really engage people's humanity and will tie readers to my characters regardless of race. I have to prove that I can connect with a wider audience.

I thought, "If I could bring these characters [Wonder Boys] to life and lead the audience to react the same way I did, this could be a really special picture." Then I read Michael's [Chabon] novel and got even more enthusiastic about it.

Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.

I'll give you the sole secret of short-story writing, and here it is: Rule 1. Write stories that please yourself. There is no rule 2. The technical points you can get from Bliss Perry. If you can't write a story that pleases yourself, you will never please the public. But in writing the story forget the public.

If it's commercial fiction that you want to write, it's story, story, story. You've got to get a story where if you tell it to somebody in a paragraph, they'll go, "Tell me more." And then when you start to write it, they continue to want to read more. And if you don't, it won't work.

What I try to do in writing any character is to put myself in his position.

I've always been drawn to the best writing that I can find. I don't care if it's in movies or theater or whatever - if you want to be in front of an audience, you have to do writing you believe in.