Writers' Craft Quotes

Writers do not write what they know. They write what they can imagine.

As writers we need to crack open language.

Characters are not created by writers. They pre-exist and have to be found.

What I do in the writing of any character is to try to enter into the mind, heart and skin of a human being who is not myself. It is the act of a writer's imagination that I set the most high.

I think that, as a writer, while it's your job to construct stories, you have to navigate your way through them with your heart.

I'm always talking to the writers because I find it so fascinating, how they're able to go to these different levels with the different stories, and have all these layers to peel back.

All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel that all that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you: the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was. If you can get so that you can give that to people, then you are a writer.

He had stylized himself--life was easier that way. He had chosen a physical mould just as writer chooses a technical form.

What helps writers, and ultimately, obviously, helps the actors - who should serve the words that the writer puts on the page - is if the character has damages, because then the writers can cultivate and excavate, like a dentist going into a tooth.

You've got to sell your heart, your strongest reactions, not the little minor things that only touch you lightly, the little experiences that you might tell at dinner. This is especially true when you begin to write, when you have not yet developed the tricks of interesting people on paper, when you have none of the technique which it takes time to learn. When, in short, you have only your emotions to sell.

She was witchy, yes, and in charge of a cauldron roiling with ideas and stories, but she always gave the impression that the stories, the ones she wrote and wrote so very well and so wisely, had simply happened, and that all she had done was to hold the pen. (On Diana Wynne Jones)

In short, you have only your emotions to sell. This is the experience of all writers.

Everything starts with what's on the page, what a writer has come up with. And whether it is a big studio film or independent film, is the story being well told? Is it interesting? Is the character interesting? And is there something about the character that may stretch me?

I've told the same story twelve different ways, but I think that's just part of what writers do. Once may not be enough.