Lisa Jackson Quotes

In any genre you're working in, you can always find a way to tell a particular kind of story. I love fantasy; I love science fiction. I love all kinds of fiction, in fact.

First and foremost, I consider myself a storyteller. And I'm endlessly fascinated with people, with what they do and why... and how they feel about it. Which means I'm interested in romance fiction. I was drawn to it, as both a reader and a writer, at the very beginning of my career. It's my kind of storytelling.

I've always thought that, as a romance writer, I had the best job in the world. I sit around all day making up emotion-drenched, conflict-laden stories that push my heroes and heroines to the edge of sanity. Then I give them a happy ending.

The biggest challenge of my career, which is something that authors of genre fiction face all the time, is writing something fresh and new and at the same time meeting reader expectations.

This is the story, this is your character, I have the sense of the landscape, I have the sense of the scene, I have all that stuff. But I'm also looking for something else to happen, an accident or something. You're focused on the story you intend to tell and then you have to have a peripheral net out to catch these accidents.

What can I say: I'm a writer - I enjoy forcing pain and suffering on my characters!

I love the idea of real-life experiences finding their way into fiction. I think that's really cool.

A standard sitcom... is a very standard idea, like these people falling in love and living with each other, and all these people living with each other. It's like, okay, we hooked them up in episode 15, how do we bust that, how do we find a new kernel in it?

These days we're all hyper-aware of the canonical way in which stories are supposed to play out - people are taught all about three-act scripting and where to put the reversal and all of that - and I think we can do more interesting narratives.

So long as you tell a story that falls within the fairly generous boundaries of the suspense novel, you're free to make the novel as good as you can. You're allowed to challenge the reader. You can experiment with voice and style.

I love inventing interesting people and then pushing them to their absolute limits - and usually those absolute limits involve homicidal faeries, werewolves, or some other paranormal menace.

What's great about well-written material is, if you can shock with justifiable actions, that's the best.

I don't think people are ever going to a place where they're like, 'I'm over stories about character and love.'

I think you can get a sort of intensity and an edginess offering nine stories in a book. Competing versions of things.

There's a saying in the movie industry that if your movie is about what you actually think it's about, you're in big trouble. I think it's the same with books.

I want the reader to feel something is astonishing. Not the 'what happens,' but the way everything happens. These long short story fictions do that best, for me.

The idea behind a dish - the delight and the surprise - makes a difference. Great literature surprises and delights, and provokes us. It isn't just 'Here's the facts - boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl.' It's how you tell it.

Don't ever let the other stuff get in the way of your inherent skills as a kick-butt storyteller. Move the reader, make them happy and sad and excited and scared. Make them stare into space after they've put the book down, thinking about the tale that's become a part of them.

I don't need all that much - I just need to know who my characters are and what kind of jam they're going to get into, and I'll write myself out of their jam.

I love all genres. The only thing I get stymied by is the Family Drama. I don't necessarily know how to approach that.

I'm very good at plot.

I was commissioned to write some romantic fiction, and I really liked doing those, and they were very instructive in terms of building characters and plots. But it never felt right for me.

All we think about is how to keep the audience engaged, and normally we're big on plot because that's the easy way to do it.

What I love with 'Game of Thrones' is, every season, I get to continue to develop the existing themes; every season, I also get to write new themes.

I tend to lean toward romance, characters, and relationships when I write, so I have to add to the setting elements and world-building when I revise.