Benjamin Percy Quotes

My process is thinking, thinking and thinking - thinking about my stories for a long time.

If you take a few days to write an outline, you're just making up scenes that you think will work, that you think will be interesting. But as you write it, other ideas occur - better ideas that have to do with what you're writing.

I start with an idea that is no more than a paragraph long, and expand it slowly into an outline. But I'm always surprised by the directions things take when I actually start writing.

I always write after I think for quite a long time, so the actual writing time is rather short. I think a lot of the work gets done when you have something on your mind while you're doing many other things.

My writing process hasn't changed - it's is the same whether I'm working on a Y.A. novel or, as now, a new novel for adults. A lot of reading, a lot of research if the subject warrants it, a lot of sticky notes and scraps of paper - and get to work.

I have these huge black foam boards on the wall, and tacked to them, I have these white punch cards with my story ideas, scenes and notes.

My writing process often begins with a question. I write down ideas and let them stew for about a year. Then, when I sit down to write, I make a list of characters and try to see how they fit.

And once I know what the first page is, then the rest will come.

I don't stare at a sheet of paper and try to think of a good word to use. I try to see where the story should go.

I'm getting ready to write a piece now, and it's been six months thinking about it, changing the instrumentation, changing the name, doing more reading.

I consider the process of gestation just as important as when you're actually sitting down putting words to the paper.

I have another Russian idea, too, with a place and a period, so I guess I have enough to keep me busy for quite some time, especially considering that I'm such a slow writer.

I must write the book out in my head now, before I sit down.

I sometimes start keeping a journal about the writing process itself. Particularly when I get the ideas, and I am trying to brood over the chaos phase. In writing a novel, you really have to brood over a lot of chaos of ideas and possibilities.

My favourite part of writing a book is thinking up the ideas, and that can start a long time before I actually sit down at my desk.

By the time I sit down ready to write, I've done a lot of longhand and a lot of note collecting along the way.

Actually, after while, finding the ideas is the easy part. Sorting them through and turning them into stories, now, that's the hard work.

I have a very long pre-writing process where I'm jotting down ideas in a notebook and ripping out relevant newspaper articles - a long fact-finding mission.

Outlining is not writing. Coming up with ideas is not writing. Researching is not writing. Creating characters is not writing. Only writing is writing.

Rarely does a complete idea come to me. I basically start with just a small scene or a snatch of dialogue and force myself to write and to keep writing. Sometimes it becomes a book.

What I have to write, the story, it is always going on in my mind. What incidences I can add in the story - it is a continuous process.

I don't think in genres. Once I get a germ of an idea I wait for it to die! And if it refuses to die and keeps coming back, I start thinking more about it. Then come the world and the characters. I wait to get bored and if I don't get bored- then I start building on them.

I've always got maybe around four different titles in mind, maybe about four different ideas that I'd love to make.

For someone who wants to write a story, they should go on thinking about the story. When it comes up to a level, where it has reached your neck that's when you should go about writing it.

I think it's important to say typing in the computer is like the last, last phase of my writing process. That's kind of the fun part. Well, it's all somewhat fun, I suppose. But usually what happens is I think about a movie for at least a year - maybe a couple more - and I don't put anything down.