Laurence Yep Quotes

When I was in my late twenties, a friend suggested that, since I was an avid SF reader and had been since I was barely a teenager, that since it didn't look like the poetry was going where I wanted, I might try writing a science fiction story. I did, and the first story I ever wrote was 'The Great American Economy.'

Every moment of a science fiction story must represent the triumph of writing over world-building.

I have 20 or 30 books completely plotted out in my mind - mysteries, thrillers, horror, romance, science fiction. You name it.

People ask me how I do research for my science fiction. The answer is, I never do any research.

I am never not thinking about stories. 'The Bone Season' is 90% of my brain - 10% is interacting with the rest of the world.

There are many reasons why novelists write, but they all have one thing in common - a need to create an alternative world.

I like going back and writing fiction.

The more fiction you read and write, the more you'll find your paragraphs forming on their own.

So much emotion goes into writing fiction.

I'm mostly a novelist these days, but I have written short stories in Fantasy, Science Fiction and horror.

With a novel, there is no hurrying it. You're constantly walking into the unknown.

I can't do fiction unless I visualize what's going on. When I began to write science fiction, one of the things I found lacking in it was visual specificity. It seemed there was a lot of lazy imagining, a lot of shorthand.

I write novels and other things.

Every now and then I'll do little things, a short story or something, that doesn't have any fantastical elements, but mostly I like the power of playing God and I like to imagine things.

I've loved sci-fi and speculative fiction since I was a kid. It was inevitable I'd try my hand at it at some point.

I was writing novels at eight. It was a science fiction epic, which went by the unimprovable title of 'Another Kind of Warrior.' I'd write it beginning to end, but when I'd finished it, I was another year older. The quality of writing and thought changed radically, so I'd start it again. I re-wrote that same book until I was 16.

I like novelists who can create other interesting worlds.

I have to do more close research and fact checking for the science fiction. This is not however to say that writing good fantasy does not involve doing good research.

Take it from me: I really love making things up, which is why I write fiction for a living.

Jigsaw Lady is the working title of a science fiction novel I've had in my head for darn near 15 years. I think I'll start work on it next year (in all my spare time) but I'd like to get it finished some day.

As long as you have ideas, you can keep going. That's why writing fiction is so much fun: because you're moving people about, and making settings for them to move in, so there's always something there to keep working on.

I am also working on a couple of short stories for anthologies. This is new to me and I'm enjoying it.

My temperament is not geared to that of a novelist.

Whether it's fiction or nonfiction, writing takes me to another world.

Fiction is lies; we're writing about people who never existed and events that never happened when we write fiction, whether its science fiction or fantasy or western mystery stories or so-called literary stories. All those things are essentially untrue. But it has to have a truth at the core of it.