Tracy K. Smith Quotes

Good storytelling appeals to me - good writing.

Fiction is the best way I know how to think something through.

I don't think in terms of optimism and pessimism when writing a story. I am telling a story.

Judgments and secrets are what make a good novel.

Storytelling is about two things; it's about character and plot.

Fiction is life with the dull bits left out.

Listen to great storytellers; slowly, you will learn about voice, timing, tension, structure, climax - all the things you need to tell stories that will capture the imagination of your audience.

In fiction, plenty do the job of conveying information, rousing suspense, painting characters, enabling them to speak. But only certain sentences breathe and shift about, like live matter in soil.

Readers want a story, not a pattern. It's the specifics of a story that make it really ping our various reader radars.

I'm drawn to a good story, really, as I hope most people are. For me, it's the story that's going to stay with you eventually, not necessarily the genre. I go to watch a film because of the story, not because it was a Western or a comedy.

I think it's such a challenge to tell a story, and I think, to be honest, the shorter, the clearer, the better.

As a storyteller, you have the story that you tell, and you have the way you can tell it, and both are equally important.

A short story is one idea; a novel is a whole soup of them.

I would say 'Flower' had a story. It is told through the environment.

I tell a good story.

I'm always curious what the world is trying to tell story wise.

No matter what kind of writing you do, it's always the details that make the story.

I want stories that tackle things.

I like to tell stories that have beginnings, middles and ends.

I like tragedies, whether they're sci-fi or something else, but I can't say I know much about any genre in particular.

If you're telling a story it's always best not to play the ending.

The shouting and opinion and jokes don't exist if there isn't first a story.

You know, we love stories and we love narrative; we love to get lost in an author's world.

I'm a storyteller, not a prophet. I'm just interested in a good story.

I'm all about the story. If I like the character and I think the story's entertaining, I'll do it.