Nelson Algren Quotes

I just focus on getting the first scene right, with a few lines about the overall plot, and then the book grows organically.

I don't really outline. I just kind of know where I'm going in my head, so I'll write and discover it for myself. Or I'll just write an entire episode and throw it out because I land on an idea and realize that's where I should jump off from.

I always have a basic plot outline, but I like to leave some things to be decided while I write.

SOON was the first novel where I used a rough outline. Usually I have characters and an idea and write as a process of discovery. Like working without a net.

I write sentence to sentence. That's the kind of writer I am. I don't have a plot when I begin. I have to be convinced and I have to be surprised.

I didn't necessarily have a total idea when I was writing the movie of where everything was going. I just wanted to have really realistic dialogue and write like people I knew talked. I tried to keep it very real.

If the novelist isn't surprised by where his book ends up, he or she probably hasn't written anything worth remembering.

I do better just letting the stories develop. I don't outline very well, and I can't follow it if I do. Once I've outlined it, why write the damn book?

I like to allow a story to arise as I'm writing scripts. I find it horrible when I try to think of something for the plot without really being on the ground and seeing where it goes.

Even though I may not intend it when I set out to write the book, these places just emerge as major players in what I'm doing, almost as if they are insisting on it.

I like to sit down every day and not know where the book is going. I have no idea where the book is going to go or how it's going to end as I'm writing it.

My writing process is very organic. I start with an idea. I have the general story arc and the cast. But then I sit down to write, and things change.

A novel is a big thing. It's difficult to hold the whole story in your mind, especially when you've finished a first draft and are still giddy from the flow of creative juices.

It takes me a very, very long time to write a story, to write a piece of fiction, whatever you call the fiction that I write. I just go about it blindly, feeling my way towards what it has to be.

What comes to me always is a character, a scene, a moment. That's going to be the beginning. Then, as I write, I begin to perceive an ending. I begin to see a destination, although sometimes that changes. And then, of course, there's the whole middle section looming.

The way that I write novels in particular is I don't usually outline; I just write. Part of the fun is discovering what's happening in the story as I'm going along.

I just try to write the best story I can, a story I would love to read, and hope that readers feel the same.

'The Secret Life of Bees' was my first novel, so I had no process. I was flying by the seat of my pants, as they say, trying to understand how I, as a novelist, would work with story.

Stories, as much as we like to talk about them, retrospectively, as emanations of theme or worldview or intention, occur primarily as technical objects when they're being written. Or at least they do for me. They're the result of thousands of decisions made at speed during revision.

I tend to plan as I write. And I want to leave myself open and the character open to keep on going until it seems to be the time to stop.

I write short stories when a little idea occurs to me, that I know isn't a part of a novel that will stand by itself and should be concentrated.

Writing sketches, you're also learning about a journey and characters, and you translate that to bigger things.

I simply don't understand authors that know everything before they write it; it seems so cold blooded. I think it's lovely when the story takes over and goes somewhere else.

I tend to start with a kernel, a vague concept, and just begin to write things down - notes about a character, lines of dialogue, descriptive passages about a place. One idea fires another. I do that for about a year. By then there's a story, and I'll go on to a complete first draft that sews many of those ragtag pieces together.

I start with a character and a situation, but I don't know what's going to happen until I write it. Sometimes things happen that surprise me.