Ruth Rendell Quotes

The way I write is very much without kind of a goal. I have something I'm interested in and then I decide I'm going to explore it. I don't know where the characters are going to go, I don't know what the movie is going to do or what the screenplay is going to do. For me, that's the way to keep it alive.

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.

I don't outline at all; I don't find it useful, and I don't like the way it boxes me in. I like the element of surprise and spontaneity, of letting the story find its own way.

As I got farther and farther along in the series I did less and less preparation. I didn't use outlines or sketches. I just had a vague idea of what I wanted to tell and then the dialogue just came to me as I was inking the page.

I start with a character and a situation, but I don't know what's going to happen until I write it. Sometimes things happen that surprise me.

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.

If I'm practicing making up what the characters will do, it's never good. In fact, when I catch myself doing that, I try to get rid of that section, and try and let them start making the decisions.

I think almost always that what gets me going with a story is the atmosphere, the visual imagery, and then I people it with characters, not the other way around.

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.

At first, I see pictures of a story in my mind. Then creating the story comes from asking questions of myself. I guess you might call it the 'what if - what then' approach to writing and illustration.

Whichever character I'm using and wherever I am in my mind dictates what kind of story I'm going to tell.

It's all about letting the story take over.

I would, however, start writing fiction about 10 years before I actually did, because it's such great fun to do, many times more creative than nonfiction.

I have seen too many screenwriters of promise become formula addicts and slaves to stop watch structure. Spend that time watching movies, reading screenplays, reading plays, and most importantly - write from your gut.

I've tried very hard and I've never found any resemblance between the people I know and the people in my novels.

I tend to plan as I write. And I want to leave myself open and the character open to keep on going until it seems to be the time to stop.

My greatest fear is feeling like a professional novelist. Somebody who creates characters, who sits down and has pieces of paper taped to the wall - what's going to happen in this scene, or this act. What I like is for it to be a much more scary, sloppy reflection of who I am.

Writing fiction, I really just sit there and it just comes.

I don't have a great eye for detail. I leave blanks in all of my stories. I leave out all detail, which leaves the reader to fill in something better.

I'm not like J.K. Rowling, where I know there's going to be this number of seasons, and I know exactly what's going to happen. I would be so bored if that was the case. There would be no journey. There would be nothing to discover.

Jerry picked up the technique of visualizing the story as a movie scenario; and whenever he gave me a script, I would see it as a screenplay. That was the technique that Jerry used, and I just picked it up.

If the script is telling the story well, that is your inspiration, and you do not need to go somewhere else.

Write out the story - rapidly, fluently, and not too critically - following the second or narrative-order synopsis. Change incidents and plot whenever the developing process seems to suggest such change, never being bound by any previous design.

You've got to think of fun stories, and if the fun story happened to have a lesson, that's a great thing. If you build a movie around a lesson, you're in real trouble.

I write through improvisation. I never card out a movie. You know how people will outline or card? I don't do that. I tend to start with an idea and go.