Patrick Rothfuss Quotes

Setting is my primary joy as a writer, building a world and watching people respond to it.

With a historical setting, I worry about accuracy at every turn... With a created world, I have to worry about all of it holding together and seeming coherent... Each presents unique challenges and opportunities.

Places are extremely important when writing a long story because place shapes a character.

My characters populate a big, vibrant world. Sometimes they rub shoulders. Sometimes they don't.

From my years of teaching creative writing, I know that new writers take the setting for granted, as simply a place to set the action, but setting is a vital element in fiction writing and deserves serious treatment.

I almost always start with setting! I have to know the world before I know how to populate it. I have a tendency to play with doors - between life and death, human and monster, mundane and magic - and with 'ADSOM,' I knew I wanted to play with the physical doors between worlds.

That's the kind of movie that I like to make, where there is an invented reality and the audience is going to go someplace where hopefully they've never been before. The details, that's what the world is made of.

In the end, all worlds, whether they're set in the future or in New Jersey of today, are fictions. Sure, you don't got to do too much work to build a mundane world, but don't get it twisted: you still got to do some work.

Food is an excellent way to do very elegant worldbuilding - the kind that can make a fictional world seem real, like it extends way past the edges of the frame.

When an author creates a town in her novels, she spends a great deal of time visualizing the streets and buildings, landmarks and topography. And while the town becomes real in her imagination, it's rare for an author to see the place she's created actually spring to life.

I'm used to something where you have to create an entire world, and I do like that process. I like getting the audience to believe that outside of the frame of your television set, there's a whole real world that exists that is different from your day-to-day reality.

Part of any book is establishing the rules at the end of the world. My first book, 'The Intuitionist,' takes place in an alternative world where elevator inspectors are important, so you have to establish rules, and part of that is, How do people talk? How do they behave?

I believe that every character is a setting, a world with moving parts, and on the other hand, every setting is, in fact, a character - a living breathing thing with personality and backstory. The way stories come to life, at least for me, is when these elements commune in relationship to one another.

The benefit of having a story that takes place in the real world is that you don't have to invent the real world. It exists.

I'm terribly particular about what I read: lush writing, secondary world or seriously far-out science fiction, strong worldbuilding, dynamic characters. I need to have it all for it to work for me.

If your characters are two-dimensional and your plot uncompelling, it won't matter how incredibly detailed and believable your fantasy world might be.

I feel it's important to familiarize yourself with the world that the character inhabits.

If you get the landscape right, the characters will step out of it, and they'll be in the right place.

There is a rule for fantasy writers: The more truth you mix in with a lie, the stronger it gets.

Fiction wouldn't be much fun without its fair share of scoundrels, and they have to live somewhere.

Who could not return from a visit to Jack Vance's world, without feeling that he had been somewhere unique, that he had experienced things unavailable in our mundane world?

I am very determined when it comes to my music, and I grew up just loving those singers who had that urban sort of feeling. So when it came down to making my record, I wanted to have that as well. ForeFront was really good about letting me go in that direction and then of course adding the more pop sounds. I feel very fortunate that I got to explore some unique and creative angles musically.

Cry Baby is about Cry Baby and the next album [which I think I have a title for but I don't wanna say anything yet because I don't know and it's too early] is a place in the weird town that I'm trying to create and its Cry Baby's perspective throughout this album. You're not learning about her, you're learning about the place that she's in and her perspective. Down the line for sure I will think of other characters in this world.

A novel is not an allegory.... It is the sensual experience of another world. If you don't enter that world, hold your breath with the characters and become involved in their destiny, you won't be able to empathize, and empathy is at the heart of the novel. This is how you read a novel: you inhale the experience. So start breathing.

A man without scenery is completely disarmed.