Edan Lepucki Quotes

I think the way you become a good storyteller is to read a lot of stories and evaluate them in your own mind.

I don't really think in terms of genre, I think in terms of story and character.

I assemble stories-me and a hundred million other people-at the sentence level. Not by coming up with a sweeping story line.

When you write a story, you’re telling yourself the story,” he said. “When you rewrite, your main job is taking out all the things that are not the story.

I think tone gives birth to the story.

If you stop to think about it, you’ll have to admit that all the stories in the world consist essentially of twenty-six letters. The letters are always the same, only the arrangement varies. From letters words are formed, from words sentences, from sentences chapters, and from chapters stories.

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 best time to tell your story is when you have to tell your story. When it's not really a choice. But then, when you get that first, messy, complicated version down, you have to read it over and be very tough on yourself and ask, 'Well what's the story here?' If you're lucky enough to have someone you trust looking over your shoulder, he or she can help you if [you] lack perspective on your own story.

I think kids abandon stories all the time. They start stories and get frustrated or get a different, better idea. I think that it is more worthwhile to stick with a story and revise it and try to finish it than abandon ship. Revisions, for any writer, are the name of the game.

There are just so many options that people have. But as a writer, you'll drive yourself crazy, if you worry about that too much. People watch a lot of TV, so they think certain things are going to happen, and you're always trying to subvert expectations.

Good stories are not written. They are rewritten.

NOVEL, n. A short story padded.

I also write the last paragraph or page of a story first. That way I always know what I'm working towards.

I think that sense of unreality inspired me to write the story within the book that [August] Brill tells himself, one of the stories he tells himself.

I think the thing I really got from Ginsberg was that you can tell a story through kind of painting pictures with words. And when I found out that you could have a profession doing that, it was thrilling to me. It just became my passion immediately, playing with words and poetry.

I taught writing for a while and whenever somebody would tell me they were going to write about their dad, I would tell them they might as well go write about killing puppies because neither story was going to work. It just doesn't work.

Writing a short story is like having a short intense affair, whereas writing a novel is like a long rich marriage.

To me, there are lots of different stories to tell and you usually find the best way to tell the one you are telling once you are in it.

Jane's stories are extremely sensible. Then Diana puts too many murders into hers. She says most of the time she doesn't know what to do with the people so she kills them off to get rid of them.

I love the idea that more people would read short fiction. I think it's such a humanizing form. It softens the boundaries between people.

As a writer you see the big picture and how you can tell as one character, how your storyline is going to meet up with all these other storylines. And as an actor you're thinking of all the minutiae, all the very small details.

Before I studied story, I was trying to write a novel, and it was terrible. It wasn't going anywhere, and I couldn't figure out what I was trying to do. It was really hard; much harder than I thought it was going to be. Now that I've studied story, I think I'd have a different approach and maybe I could actually get it done.

Take a play that you like but you think is flawed, and see if you can improve it and turn it into a musical. [...] Then make up your own story.

An idea might spark an essay, but never a story.

I wanted to write a story that was different than what I've done before - so I decided to write dual love stories that will keep the reader wondering how the stories will come together by the end.