Brent Weeks Quotes

All the writing elements are the same. You need to tell a good story... You've got good characters... People think there's some dramatic difference between writing 'Little Bear' and the 'Hunger Games,' and as a writer, for me, there isn't.

I do feel that if you can write one good sentence and then another good sentence and then another, you end up with a good story.

A good story cannot be devised; it has to be distilled.

We're constantly trying to find the best way to tell the stories that we want.

These days, I like to think of sentences as workers. Only one of their jobs is to look and sound good. Sentences are the carriers of plot. They're the conjurers of images, the conveyors of tone and meaning and voice. The best sentences surprise us.

I think the reason my stories have been so successful is that I have a strong sense of metaphor.

When writing, I'm not thinking about war, even if I'm writing about it. I'm thinking about sentences, rhythm and story. So the focus, when I'm working, even if it's on a story that takes place at war, is not on bombs or bullets. It's on the story.

I simply love writing good stories, that's my passion.

I'm a writer. I just love telling stories.

Technique is of less interest than character and story.

No matter how many books you've written, whenever you sit down to write a new book, you always feel the same challenge - how do you shape this story into a book that people are going to love.

Holy cow - everything about writing a novel is hard for me.

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

As far as personal philosophies go, I think you should know your ending. I know that's radically different from a lot of other writers who just organically like to find the story. Other than that, I try different things and mess around. I'm still just playing a good bit.

Usually after finishing a novel, I have a head full of bad ideas for the next one.

I don't stare at a sheet of paper and try to think of a good word to use. I try to see where the story should go.

It makes more sense to write one big book - a novel or nonfiction narrative - than to write many stories or essays. Into a long, ambitious project you can fit or pour all you possess and learn.

Making a book is a craft, like making a clock; it needs more than native wit to be an author.

I write short stories. I write every day.

You have only so many chances to tell stories. I didn't want to be forever wedded to one form of storytelling when there are so many out there.

Stories of all lengths and depths come from different parts of the cave. For a novel, you must lay in mental, physical and spiritual provision as for a siege or for a time of hectic explosions, while a short story is, or can be, a steady, timed flame like the lighting of a blow lamp on a building site full of dry tinder.

I came up with a story and I wrote it.

I'm not a fast writer, and I find the process of writing a first draft to be painful and frustrating. Usually, I start with a character, a premise, and some image that gives me a particular feeling.

When I tell people there are three stories in 'Thunderstruck' that were from the same wrecked novel, they want to guess what they are. Nobody has. There are no characters or timelines in common. They're structured very differently. A good novel wouldn't have pulled apart so easily.

I'm not one of these 'the characters write themselves; the story just fell out of me' kind of writers. Wish it was like that.