Engaging Writing Quotes

Master storytellers like Jeffrey Archer and Arthur Hailey use simple language. But they manage to grab the attention of the readers right from page one. I'll consider myself a good storyteller the day people believe it's OK to be late for work or postpone deadlines just to finish reading my book.

The writing is so great on TV now; it's such a pleasure to watch.

but for my own part, if a book is well written, I always find it too short.

The secret of popular writing is never to put more on a given page than the common reader can lap off it with no strain whatsoever on his habitually slack attention.

In the broadest possible sense, writing well means to communicate clearly and interestingly and in a way that feels alive to the reader. Where there’s some kind of relationship between the writer and the reader - even though it’s mediated by a kind of text - there’s an electricity about it.

It's hard to build community around mediocre and mundane writing.

When a good writer is having fun, the audience is almost always having fun too.

You have to hold your audience in writing to the very end-much more than in talking, when people have to be polite and listen to you.

Mary Roach's curiosity is notoriously infectious.

I tried to depict the human face of this history, I wanted to write a book that people would actually want to read.

Clear writing is universal. People talk about writing down to an audience or writing up to an audience; I think that's nonsense. If you write in a way that is clear, transparent, and elegant, it will reach everyone.

Brevity in writing is the best insurance for its perusal.

And the writers are good in that it's easy to memorize, and good writing has an innate rhythm to it. And I've always felt that it's easier to get in your head than writing that has very kind of mind busting moments.

There are no dull subjects. There are only dull writers.

I made a deliberate choice to write something people would enjoy, not knock people out with 'Boy, he can really put a clause together!'

It's just a matter of writing the kind of book I enjoy reading. Something better be happening at the beginning, and then on every page after, or I get irritated.

You can't write well what you don't read for pleasure. If it doesn't entertain you, it's not going to entertain anyone else.

I don't know if anything I write will endure, but I do try to write it as a narrative that will not only challenge but also entice the reader into the lives of children.

And I haven't read a lot of blogs but if someone writes about what they care about I'm sure it's interesting.

I've always been into 'fast-paced, don't bore 'em, keep it moving along, stick with the story.' You know: tell a story the way I want to hear a story. I find it more rewarding to write for kids, but I also find it a little easier, because you can just let loose a little bit more in terms of fantasy and stuff.

Anyone who writes down to children is simply wasting his time. You have to write up, not down. Children are demanding. They are the most attentive, curious, eager, observant, sensitive, quick, and generally congenial readers on earth.... Children are game for anything. I throw them hard words and they backhand them across the net.

The goal for me is to pull in the reader and to have them ask questions.

My most important piece of advice to all you would-be writers: when you write, try to leave out all the parts readers skip.

I love piecing together intricate thoughts that people find compulsively readable and they can't put down.

Book after book, I get hooked, every time the writer talks to me like a friend.