Alexander Chee Quotes

If it's commercial fiction that you want to write, it's story, story, story. You've got to get a story where if you tell it to somebody in a paragraph, they'll go, "Tell me more." And then when you start to write it, they continue to want to read more. And if you don't, it won't work.

A good story is always more dazzling than a broken piece of truth.

I try to end every chapter with an air of suspense. I try to leave the reader wanting to turn the page.

Mary Jo Putney is a gifted writer with an intuitive understanding of what makes romances work. I loved Silk and Shadows, couldn't put it down, and don't think readers will, either.

I found some time ago that I have to be careful, while working on a novel, what I read.

I would imagine that anyone picking up a book written by me would expect a fast-paced story that requires minimal effort to turn the pages. The reader would also be looking for some out-of-the-ordinary revelations along the way. At the end of the day, I'm a writer who simply loves revealing stuff that is out-of-the-ordinary.

My job as an author is to tell the story in the best way possible, to make it flow seamlessly and get the reader to keep turning the page.

The perfect story is one you can retell in three minutes, and every single sentence is interesting.

I can think of no other experience quite like that of being 20 or so pages into a book and realizing that this is the real thing: a book that is going to offer the delicious promise of a riveting story, arresting language and characters that will haunt me for days.

The first thing that attracts me to any script is the writing. If I find myself becoming lost in a good yarn, then I feel certain that others will, too.

I think a writer's first job is to entertain, even in novels: to tell a compelling story that pulls the reader along toward an end. At the same time, the best stories are character-driven.

I have often heard that the novel is dead. But I see novels produced, I don't know how many a week, in France. I have the impression it's carrying along quite well.

I believe the most important thing you can do in any kind of novel is to make your reader want to go on with it and want to know what happens next.

If you don't have people that the reader cares about and stories that are gripping, you've got nothing.

I believe in anything that will engage the audience and make the story more effective.

I see a lot of scripts, and very few of them leap off the page at you.

The first rule is you have to create a reality that makes the reader want to come back and see what happens next. The way I tried to do it, I'd create characters that the reader could instantly recognize, and hopefully bond with, and put them through situations that keep the reader on the edge of their seat.

I read the 'Kapoor & Sons' script in a half hour, forty five minutes. Not because I skimming through it... I read it like a book. By the end, I was blown away. I picked up the phone and said, 'This script is gold.'

The thing I'm always trying to do when I write is hit that sweet spot where the book both keeps you up late at night, and yet a week after you've finished, it still pops back into your head.

Young adults are honest readers. They won't stay with a book unless they have a reason, so it has to move along.

I believe with all my heart in delivering on my contract with my readers. They've got plenty of other things to do, so I had better give them a reason to turn every one of these 550 pages. This is my promise: I solemnly swear I'll make you laugh out loud at least once, cry a little in private, and burn whatever you left on the stove.

A good story feels both surprising and inevitable, fresh and familiar.

"Unputdownable" is, I suppose, something we all dream of, maybe without knowing it. I realized, some time ago, that a novel can hold a lot, and it made sense that this one was not of the sleek and economical variety, but instead the "full" type. Novel as piñata. And the reader does the whacking. I had a central idea, which is to look at what happens to talent over time.

That was asking a lot of my readers, I realized, but I was trying to write the novel I would most enjoy decoding.

What interests me about fiction is plot. And what interests me about plot is whether someone tells a story that moves me within the constraints of storytelling. And I have narrowly defined storytelling.