Tara Westover Quotes

I think it's a short story writer's duty, as well as writing well about emotions and characters, to write story.

I was reading stories by Raymond Carver and some of his stuff sort of ended abruptly here and there, where in other short stories that I've read have a bit of an ending, a climax, a twist or something like that.

A short story is a shard, a sliver, a vignette. It's a biopsy on the human condition but it doesn't have this capacity to think autonomously for itself.

Writers cannot simply have a go, imagining it's easier to produce a story than a novel because fewer words are required. Have a go by all means; be intrepid, but be equipped.

Short-story writing requires an exquisite sense of balance. Novelists, frankly, can get away with more. A novel can have a dull spot or two, because the reader has made a different commitment.

There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.

I do think that short story writing is often a matter of luck.

I have the 'thing' worked out - the trick or the surprise or the pivotal fact. Then I just start somewhere and let the story work itself out.

Also, they don't understand - writing is language. The use of language. The language to create image, the language to create drama. It requires a skill of learning how to use language.

The first lie of fiction is that the author gives some order to the chaos of life: chronological order, or whatever order the author chooses.

A short story can be packed with meaning and impact, with the concentrated density of a collapsed star, but should preferably also have a kind of elegant simplicity.

The way to tell a really big story, I think, is to tell a really small story.

I write short stories. I write every day.

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.

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.

A lot of aspiring writers are all ready to write a novel, but they don't know how to write sentences.

As a writer, my only responsibility is to tell a compelling story.

Well, to be honest I think I'm a better short story writer than a novelist. Novels I find very hard, hours and hours, weeks and weeks, of conscious thought - whereas short stories slip out painlessly in a few days.

Marc Cherry is so good at writing himself into a corner, then writing himself out of that corner. It's really fun to watch that.

Good scripts and interesting stories are hard enough to find.

I get the beginning. I get the end. Then I write the middle. That's how I do it.

Furthermore, even if ideas were gettable - say, stacked in a secluded cave like the Dead Sea scrolls - I wouldn't go there. An 'idea,' especially one adhered to from start to finish, can be disastrous for a compelling piece of fiction.

It's not easy to tell a story about writers and make that feel like a complete story and an interesting story.

When I really have to push and grope and scratch and claw to make a story work, that's a telltale sign that maybe something conceptually isn't right.

I write in a pretty straightforward way. I kind of sit down at page one and start writing.