Scott Westerfeld Quotes

They put it on the page because it sounded good or it looked good or they read it in a book somewhere that this is how you structure a script or something, and they just don't get it. It's surprising.

I think that a classic style in writing tends to remove the reader one level from the immediacy of the experience. For any normal reader, I think a colloquial style makes him feel more as though he is within the action, instead of just reading about it.

Show, don't tell, is a mantra repeated by tutors of creative writing courses the world over. As advice for amateurs, it is sound and helps avoid character profiling, unactivated scenes, and broken narrative frames.

I think with one exception I've never changed an opening sentence after a book was completed.

When a place comes across vividly in a novel, it's often compared to a character. I can remember writing teachers who encouraged me to treat setting as if it were a character, to give it three dimensions, to make it come alive, jump off the page.

When I'm writing, I don't really have much other guide than, 'As a reader, how would I respond to this?'

I want to write so well that a person is 30 or 40 pages in a book of mine... before she realizes she's reading.

While I admire writers who are able to write with a vitality based on order and action, I work in a different vein. I often feel that if I can get the language just right, the language hypnotizes the reader.

I rather envy writers who do variations on a theme. I like reading those books, but in practice, I can't do it.

There are good writers and bad writers. It's hard to find writers who really speak to you, but the work is out there.

When I start a new novel, I often write 'test chapters' in different tenses and from different points of view in order to figure out which is best to tell the tale.

I don't really think about genre. I like to write books that I'd love to read myself.

A great story poorly told doesn't do anybody any good at all, and nobody wants to hear it, and nobody wants to read it. The craft of it is really more important than the subject matter.

I try to write short novels and leave details out not because I want to be minimalist, but because I think that it enables the readers' creativity and interaction with the book.

The novelist's obsession, moment by moment, is with language: finding the right next word.

I don't like books that play to the gallery, but I've become more concerned with telling a story as clearly and engagingly as I can.

I'm a very laboured writer. I hammer it out sentence by sentence, and it takes a long time. That's what the work is, right? To make the reader think it is not hard to do.

People never read my books for the quality of the documentary value.

Like most art forms, writing is part instinct and part craft. The craft part is the part that can be taught, and that can make a crucial difference to lots of writers.

I need a distance to my characters when I write.

I'm good at description and imparting flow to a story, but I don't necessarily understand the value of long scenes.

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'm the kind of writer who thinks style is just as important as the story being told.

As I write, I try to be the character.

I can't write unless I've got the voice for a character.