Margaret Haddix Quotes

When you do fiction, it is your imagination you have put out there.

As long as you have ideas, you can keep going. That's why writing fiction is so much fun: because you're moving people about, and making settings for them to move in, so there's always something there to keep working on.

You can't write anything you want. Once you write that first chapter, then everything else is determined. You can write anything you want, but only one thing works.

I don't have a plan for a story when I sit down to write. I would get quite bored carrying it out.

Everyone else thinks I'm a nonfiction writer. I think it's because my nonfiction is easier to find. But I write both in equal measure. I love writing fiction because I can totally lose myself, and I get to make up the rules of the world that I'm writing.

Being a novelist, you can roam around with a story and indulge yourself.

As a writer of fiction, you don't ever want to limit the characters you create to the life you've lived. That's insanity to me.

I'm always excited about stories that allow me to explore a character and create interesting stories and worlds that we haven't seen before.

I could make up characters till the cows came home. Plot's what hard. Very hard.

When you write fiction, you have an ideal reader in your mind who's sort of you but smarter.

People ask me how I do research for my science fiction. The answer is, I never do any research.

Obviously, I love to do both contemporary and historical fiction. When a hint of a story grabs me, I try to go with it to see where it will take me whatever the setting.

Being a novelist is the adult version of a kid creating a make-believe world. But unlike a child, a writer of fiction has to come up with a structured story, one that has as much meaning for others as it has for her.

Every now and then I'll do little things, a short story or something, that doesn't have any fantastical elements, but mostly I like the power of playing God and I like to imagine things.

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.

There's an outline for each of the books that I adhere to pretty closely, but I'm not averse to taking it in a new direction, as long as I can get it back to where I need it to go.

There are many reasons why novelists write, but they all have one thing in common - a need to create an alternative world.

I love telling stories. Creating a character, a world, a whole universe out of nothing. That part I can't get enough of.

Writing is a process of discovering. I could never outline a narrative; that just sounds boring. There's no joy of discovery in what you're doing if that's your strategy.

As a novelist, you could say that I am dreaming while I am awake, and every day I can continue with yesterday's dream. Because it is a dream, there are so many contradictions and I have to adjust them to make the story work. But, in principle, the original dream does not change.

In writing fiction, I can be free. I can use my life. The raw material is my experiences.

I like going back and writing fiction.

The great advantage of a novel is you can put in whatever comes into your head - it has the same shape as the human brain.

While I was in high school, I discovered and began writing science fiction.

Being an author is fun. It's a great job, because I can stay up as late as I want, and if I feel like taking the day off, I do it. Plus, I get to make up silly stories and draw pictures all day.