Henry James Quotes

When I find research really rewarding is when one piece of information gives you an idea for a story. That's when it's great.

For me, inspiration isn't a sort of spark which lights the fire of the story. It's more like a thread, one of many, which you can tease out of a story once it's written, if you feel so inclined.

While many of my musicals deal with big themes and ideas, I don't intentionally go looking to write shows like that. A story will interest me, and then somewhere along the way, I discover that hidden inside are these epic themes.

My books start almost before I realise it. Once in a while, some accident causes an idea to rise to the surface and say: 'now.'

Stories develop from things I read and also from my own experiences and experiences of people I know.

Whenever I write a novel, most of the time it starts with barest slip of an idea.

When I journal, I write about images that I've seen that I think might make good stories. I write about things that I hear that I think I can turn into a story. I write about the story that I'm working on and where I think it might go.

The stories tend to be what I work on when I'm stuck. Something will just pop into my head and I'll think that's more of a story.

Every project starts with a story.

I have these huge black foam boards on the wall, and tacked to them, I have these white punch cards with my story ideas, scenes and notes.

I don't start writing a script until I can see it all in my head, then it's a matter of getting it down in white heat.

My stories run up and bite me on the leg - I respond by writing down everything that goes on during the bite. When I finish, the idea lets go and runs off.

'The Lake of Dreams' grew gradually, over many years, elements and ideas accruing until they gained enough critical mass to become a novel.

And once I know what the first page is, then the rest will come.

If you take a few days to write an outline, you're just making up scenes that you think will work, that you think will be interesting. But as you write it, other ideas occur - better ideas that have to do with what you're writing.

It's kind of a mysterious process, but something will catch my attention, and I'll make a note about it. I may even write a few pages about it, and then I'll put it aside, but I'll sort of keep it in mind. Then as time goes on, other things will gather to it as if it's a magnet, almost, and eventually, there's enough to make the story.

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.

I don't really know where my ideas come from. I start with a time and a place. That's what I need to get started, and an intellectual question.

It's true to say that once I've got the bare bones of a story, I often get ideas from my own research trips to faraway places.

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

I get inspired at different times and in different ways.

I never think of an entire book at once. I always just start with a very small idea. In 'Holes,' I just began with the setting; a juvenile correctional facility located in the Texas desert. Then I slowly make up the story, and rewrite it several times, and each time I rewrite it, I get new ideas, and change the old ideas around.

You don't get inspiration sitting at a drawing board or in front of your computer.

I tend to wait for true stories to mature into fiction. Most of my fiction grew out of a long-germinating real-life situation.

The question I am most often asked is how do I find my ideas? The answer is I don't. Ideas find me. A character in history will suddenly step right out of the past and demand a book. Generally, people don't bother to speak to me unless there's a good chance that I'll take them on.