Tom Wolfe Quotes

What is most important to me is that my narrator's voice is believable, and that, though it is clearly an absolute fiction, it has the emotional resonance of memoir.

When I write for kids, I have to make sure they know what can't happen. They have to know it's a fantasy. But when I write for adults, they have to think it's real. Every detail has to be real or they won't buy it.

Rule one of reading other people's stories is that whenever you say 'well that's not convincing' the author tells you that's the bit that wasn't made up. This is because real life is under no obligation to be convincing.

Everything in a story should be credible.

I'm writing about real things. Real people. Real characters. You have to believe what I write about is true or you wouldn't pay any attention at all. Sometimes it's me, or a composite of me and other people. Sometimes it's not me at all.

All stories should have some honesty and truth in them, otherwise you're just playing about.

I don't quite operate within the realist mode. I kind of push the stories out towards the cusp of believability - that's the area of interest for me.

I do crazy amounts of research. I want this stuff to 'work,' so to speak. I need to be, at least to me, believable - because if I feel - if I cannot invest some element of verisimilitude, the reader is absolutely not going to buy in.

A good writer turns fact into truth; a bad writer will, more often than not, accomplish the opposite.

Fiction has to be plausible. All history has to do is happen.

I think the best way to sell a made-up character is to plant his feet into the real earth.

I want my fiction to seem real.

Thus, in a real sense, I am constantly writing autobiography, but I have to turn it into fiction in order to give it credibility.

Reality is not always probable, or likely. But if you're writing a story, you have to make it as plausible as you can, because if not, the reader's imagination will reject it.

There is a rule for fantasy writers: The more truth you mix in with a lie, the stronger it gets.

Real life doesn't have to be convincing, but fiction does.

If it's fiction, then it better be true.

Fiction intended to please, should resemble truth as much as possible.

The only difference between reality and fiction is that fiction needs to be credible.

The difference between fiction and nonfiction is that fiction must be absolutely believable.

As with all other aspects of fiction, the key to writing good dialogue is honesty.

Matter-of-fact descriptions make the improbable seem real.

The truer the facts the better the fiction.

I love writing fiction - you can take just what you want from a place, and leave the rest.

You can tell within a sentence if something is fiction or non-fiction. You can tell in the artifice of the language or the care of the construction the difference between art and life.