Alexandra Fuller Quotes

Writers cannot simply have a go, imagining it's easier to produce a story than a novel because fewer words are required. Have a go by all means; be intrepid, but be equipped.

I don't know who said that novelists read the novels of others only to figure out how they are written. I believe it's true. We aren't satisfied with the secrets exposed on the surface of the page: we turn the book around to find the seams.

Actually ideas are everywhere. It's the paperwork, that is, sitting down and thinking them into a coherent story, trying to find just the right words, that can and usually does get to be labor.

A lot of aspiring writers are all ready to write a novel, but they don't know how to write sentences.

Read. Read. Read. Read many genres. Read good writing. Read bad writing and figure out the difference. Learn the craft of writing.

I do think that short story writing is often a matter of luck.

There is a reason there is no such thing as a folk writer. But to be a writer you have learn what it takes to captivate a reader in order to make them turn the page. And in order to learn that, you have to read.

Also, they don't understand - writing is language. The use of language. The language to create image, the language to create drama. It requires a skill of learning how to use language.

I'm very involved in the writing on every level.

Read and write with a sensitive ear. The craft of writing is very important. Practice the craft.

The craft of writing is all the stuff that you can learn through school; go to workshops and read books. Learn characterization, plot and dialogue and pacing and word choice and point of view. Then there's also the art of it which is sort of the unknown, the inspiration, the stuff that is noncerebral.

I write. This is what I do. My job is to sit down with my vocabulary, select words, and decide what order they should be placed in an attempt to keep someone's attention and perhaps provide them with a laugh or two along the way.

I started writing by doing small related things but not the thing itself, circling it and getting closer. I had no idea how to write fiction. So I did journalism because there were rules I could learn. You can teach someone to write a news story. They might not write a great one, but you can teach that pretty easily.

It isn't as if a writer merely records life as it unfurls. Reality does not automatically transcribe as literature; real people are not shapely, compelling characters to be harvested. Charming facts and sharp observations rarely slide seamlessly into whatever narrative is at hand.

I've been writing fiction probably since I was about 6 years old, so it's something that is second nature to me now. I just sit down and start writing. I don't sit down and start writing and it comes out perfectly - it's a process.

What one's goal should be is just to become a better writer and to tell different kinds of stories.

Unfortunately, there's still a lot of beginning writers who think you can just write your first draft and hand it in.

The written word is the basic of everything. Most important, the idea, and after that, the dialogue. You can rehash the dialogue as you go along, it 's disgraceful to have to do this, but now and again you have no choice.

I want to become a very good writer.

I learned to write fiction the way I learned to read fiction - by skipping the parts that bored me.

'What It Is' was based on this class I've been teaching for 10 years - I wanted to write a book about writing that didn't mention stuff like story structure, protagonists, and all those things that we know about only because they already exist in stories.

If you are a good writer - and I think I am - you are able to handle any kind of group and imagine their lives.

If there's anything I'm keen to get better at in my writing, then it's the writing of prose as opposed to the writing of dialogue.

I don't think I'm a natural novelist. Plot is definitely one of my weaker points. I've been working on it a long time, and it's not getting much better.

I always tell my students to seek out other writers as models, and though it took me years to heed my own advice, it really was life-altering when I found writers who wrote long stories, full of back story and side plots and sub-histories.