Orson Scott Card Quotes

Every story teaches me how to write it. Unfortunately, it doesn't teach me how to write the next one.

The story is always better than your ability to write it.

Every story teaches you how to write that story but not the next story.

Because I come from the theater, I use the images of the theater and of movies a great deal when I write. I see the story in my head. I have to break down the outline of a story first. I have to know where I'm going. Usually I have a good beginning and a good ending, and then I think, "Now I have to find my way through it."

When you're writing a novel, you're still telling a story. But you're telling it very differently. It's a craft like anything else.

Each story tells me how to write it, but not the one afterwards.

When I start to write, I see my stories as a kind of movie. For instance, I ask myself, "What kind of opening do I want for this book?"

Once you play with these scenes and you're outlining it, again and again, and telling each other the narrative, and telling it to people you know, trying to make sure that the mathematics of the story work, you feel that those are in place, and the actual writing and final draft doesn't take as long.

There are a million ideas in a world of stories. Humans are storytelling animals. Everything's a story, everyone's got stories, we're perceiving stories, we're interested in stories. So to me, the big nut to crack is to how to tell a story, what's the right way to tell a particular story.

I grew up with some kind of storytelling instinct, and when I write, my default setting is to find a story and then to tell it. It's the only way I know how to write.

The big nut to crack is to how to tell a story, what’s the right way to tell a particular story.

I've told the same story twelve different ways, but I think that's just part of what writers do. Once may not be enough.

To me, there are lots of different stories to tell and you usually find the best way to tell the one you are telling once you are in it.

I discovered John Truby ten years ago when a friend told me about his screenwriting course. I studied Truby's principles for a year and -- using them -- I wrote the first draft of The Thieves of Ostia in two weeks. I go back to his teachings before each new book I write. Each time I study Truby, I learn something new.

I think great filmmakers will always talk in terms of storytelling. These guys were always about the story. That is how I love to talk about a film.

I have written a great many stories and I still don't know how to go about it except to write it and take my chances.

When I finally write the first sentence, I want to know everything that happens, so that I am not inventing the story as I write it - rather, I am remembering a story that has already happened.

Stop trying to write sentences and start trying to write stories.

I don't just look at things as an actor. I've also written several films, so I look at it as a storyteller and I know if something worked and should have been in there for the benefit of the story and the benefit of the character.

Good stories are constructed, not found.

People are interested if you tell stories well and relevantly.

On the whole, stories don't write themselves.

When you're telling a story, you've got to give details.

My own experience is that once a story has been written, one has to cross out the beginning and the end. It is there that we authors do most of our lying.

What you're normally doing as a writer is trying to find the narrative.