Christopher Hitchens Quotes

My job as an author is to tell the story in the best way possible, to make it flow seamlessly and get the reader to keep turning the page.

I think that a classic style in writing tends to remove the reader one level from the immediacy of the experience. For any normal reader, I think a colloquial style makes him feel more as though he is within the action, instead of just reading about it.

I tend to write one character at a time. But I don't write the entirety of one character at a time.

When I'm writing, I don't really have much other guide than, 'As a reader, how would I respond to this?'

I don't like books that play to the gallery, but I've become more concerned with telling a story as clearly and engagingly as I can.

Some of our best writers are self taught. Screenwriting is a combo of craft and art. The craft part can be taught, about how to be visual and economical with scenes. However, finally it's the individuality of the writer that will come into play.

I try to write cinematically. Let me define what I mean by that. First of all, I try to write in a visual way so that the reader can watch a movie in their head. And it keeps moving. I try to structure the stories like a screenplay may be structured.

What I do when I write is I just write the way I would tell it, so it comes out just exactly the way I would talk to you.

Nonfiction, to me, feels like an argument, whereas a novel is like a series of questions.

I intentionally approached each story in 'Killing and Dying' in a different way, and that includes the writing process.

I follow only one rule in my writing, and that is to be interesting. If the story is interesting to you, the writer, then it will probably be interesting to somebody else.

I think, in reading a few sentences of text, you can just tell the tone, and that's something I love in prose writers but in lyricists as well.

People, certainly in the U.K., look down on screenwriting as an art form, but I love the discipline of it. Next to the bagginess of novel writing, it almost feels like a martial art.

The writer will write in his or her words, but the readers, even when they are not reading you, will take it elsewhere entirely.

When I write, I try to become different characters.

Whenever I write, I write very dialogue-heavy things because I love to force my characters to interact with one another.

You spend so much time as a writer telling straight and linear stories.

If you're a good writer, you don't have everybody shouting in every scene.

I don't think I have a very novelistic brain. I like to read, but I don't know if I could ever write a novel.

The omniscient narrator is a bizarre technique, when you think about it, and no one uses it much anymore. But for the novels I want to write, it's the only approach that makes sense to me.

I write in character a lot.

I don't usually like teen novels written in the present tense, particularly those told from a first-person viewpoint. Too many writers seem to believe that using either or both devices automatically imbues their stories with deep seriousness and a contemporary feel.

A baby writer should take inspiration from her predecessors but also find ways to tell her own stories in her own way.

To me, I'm a storyteller.

I use voiceover just like I use dialogue. There's a way to give out information or give out insight to the character or give out their worldview, and maybe you have to slip in exposition, but it's all about how you write it.