R. L. Stine Quotes

When I write a book, I write very cleanly from page one to the last page. I hardly ever write out of sequence.

It depends on the book and what else is going on during my life, but it usually takes me about six months to write and revise the first draft.

I spend about eight months researching and outlining my book.

I love the structural part of the writing process.

I am a big outliner. For my adult book, 'The Visibles,' I did not outline, and it took me two years to write because I just didn't outline, and I had no path.

Now I'm trying to work outside first person. I do plan to write more books.

I am a very linear thinker, so I write beginning to end. I write hundreds of pages per book that never make it into print.

Outlining is not writing. Coming up with ideas is not writing. Researching is not writing. Creating characters is not writing. Only writing is writing.

'Library of Souls' is longer than 'Hollow City' by a considerable margin, but this time I was on the right track from the beginning, so I never had to start over. It took about 15 months, all told.

I tend to start books with a very broad outline, but I always leave room for happy accidents. With 'The Passenger,' there were perhaps too many of those.

When I started working on 'Stay With Me,' I thought it would take two years to complete the novel.

I make extensive outlines before I write a book. I usually know what will happen. I know the characters, and I know what they are about.

I want to wake up one morning and know how to write page one, or page 10, or page 250. But I never seem to know how to do it. Every book is different and takes a different structure, style, process, etc. And relearning how to write is where the insanity comes from.

Every book is like starting over again. I've written books every way possible - from using tight outlines to writing from the seat of my pants. Both ways work.

I would fix other people's lines if they asked me on occasion. The hard part of writing is the architecture of it, getting the story and structuring it. Not the tweaking of lines.

I must write the book out in my head now, before I sit down.

I don't ever want to impose something on the story. I want the story to tell me.

I sometimes start keeping a journal about the writing process itself. Particularly when I get the ideas, and I am trying to brood over the chaos phase. In writing a novel, you really have to brood over a lot of chaos of ideas and possibilities.

For me, the hardest thing in the world is how to start a book.

Writers are troubled about finding time to write and writer's block and publicizing books that aren't books yet. They agonize over how to write and what to write and what not to write.

I am a big proponent of writing a great outline. That way you can avoid hitting a roadblock. There is no worse feeling than writing yourself into a corner but if you've figured it all out in the outline then you won't have that problem.

In the writing process, the more a story cooks, the better.

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.

When I start writing a novel, I have no sense of direction, no idea, really nothing.

I start with an idea that is no more than a paragraph long, and expand it slowly into an outline. But I'm always surprised by the directions things take when I actually start writing.