Julia Leigh Quotes

Read and write with a sensitive ear. The craft of writing is very important. Practice the craft.

I find it an easy way into writing pieces is to think what the character's voice is like, and start from there.

My preferred style is to write in first person, so I always have to play around with possible narrator voices until I find something that works.

Well, in features, and in writing especially, it's often the style of the writer comes in.

I consider myself kind of a reporter - one who uses words that are more like music and that have a choreography. I never think of myself as a poet; I just get up and write.

I write in a pretty straightforward way. I kind of sit down at page one and start writing.

I think all characters are facets of the writer. In a way, they have to be if you're going to write them convincingly.

A writer is defined by the language in which he writes, and I would stick to that definition.

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

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.

When you are a writer, the assist-to-turnover ratio... there are a lot more turnovers than assists.

I made a deliberate choice to write something people would enjoy, not knock people out with 'Boy, he can really put a clause together!'

I knew I would read all kinds of books and try to get at what it is that makes good writers good. But I made no promises that I would write books a lot of people would like to read.

A lot of times you get people writing wonderful sentences and paragraphs, and they fall in love with their prose style, but the stories really aren't that terrific.

I've written short stories from male perspectives before, and I've never had a problem with it as long as I've understood the character's emotions and motivations.

I'll agonize over sentences. Mostly because you're trying to create specific effects with sentences, and because there are a number of different voices in the book.

Call me the author.

I write. This is what I do. My job is to sit down with my vocabulary, select words, and decide what order they should be placed in an attempt to keep someone's attention and perhaps provide them with a laugh or two along the way.

I don't have a style. I just try to write what the story demands.

I'm here to get the story on to the page. It would be good to catch your attention, and I have to make you want to read on, and I suppose I prefer you don't actually think about the 'how' at all - the writing technique, the 'style', or even who it is that's putting this together.

Some writers would be kinder than others, I'm sure. Hopefully they might describe my techniques as a mixture of tried and tested formulas - if it aint broke don't fix it - and unexpected twists.

Writers - all writers, even screenwriters - like to make their mark. I don't think many screenwriters can write. They pass as writers.

Robert Ludlum, all of them, write the absolute best they can. You can't tone it down. You just do what you do, and if it comes out literary, so be it.

The elegance and the quality - the talent is always in the literature. I start with the word and I base everything on that. It doesn't make any difference to me.

It's a dead give away of an inexperienced writer if every character speaks with the same voice.