Writers' Perspective, Writer's Perspective Quotes

You know, my problem with most screenwriting is it is a blueprint. It's like they're afraid to write the damn thing. And I'm a writer. That's what I do. I want it to be written. I want it to work on the page first and foremost. So when I'm writing the script, I'm not thinking about the viewer watching the movie. I'm thinking about the reader reading the script.

I'm not afraid, as a writer, of being emotional. I'm obsessed with human emotion, body parts, physicality.

Academics love to make theories about a body of work, but each book consumes the writer and is the sum of his or her world.

As a writer, I think about films I work on in a traditional Hollywood kind of a way. I'm curious to see how it translates.

I'm often characterized as an optimistic writer, and certainly my 'Neanderthal Parallax' and 'WWW' trilogies shade toward the utopian. I like to think that's not simple naivete, but rather a reasonable approach.

As a writer, every time I create a character, I try to go for something to captivate the audience in some way. It's also an extension of how the audience would like to see themselves.

I strongly believe that the art of the novel works best when the writer identifies with whoever he or she is writing about. Novels in the end are based on the human capacity, compassion, and I can show more compassion to my characters if I write in a first person singular.

A writer is a spectator, looking at everything with a highly critical eye.

I think of myself as a writer who happens to be doing his writing as an anthropologist.

I'm a writer, and the subject is less important than the act of writing itself.

Most of screenplay writing is deciding which voices you want to listen to and take on board.

I can't really sit around and talk with people who believe that the Bible is the way it happened, because that's man-made. I'm a writer, too; that's how I look at the Bible. Like, 'I could've written a better version than that,' you know? At least a more interesting one, and then maybe more people would go to church. I could definitely do a revamp.

And life is a good thing for a writer. It's where we get our raw material, for a start. We quite like to stop and watch it.

A writer lives in awe of words, for they can be cruel or kind, and they can change their meanings right in front of you. They pick up flavors and odors like butter in a refrigerator.

Every writer, to some extent, writes about himself.

For a writer, you definitely do not want to be in the mainstream. You want to be on the edge because that's where the vantage point is. That's where you can see.

I don't know what the definition of a short story is, and I don't even care to answer that question. That's something somebody in academia would think about. I just want to tell a story, and if people listen, and if it stays with you, it's a story.

Few sensible authors are happy discussing the creative process--it is, after all, black magic.

One of the gifts of being a writer is that it gives you an excuse to do things, to go places and explore. Another is that writing motivates you to look closely at life, at life as it lurches by and tramps around.

For a writer it's a dream to sit and watch people as close as possible.

I'm not an academic; I'm not an archaeologist. I'm a writer, communicating ideas to the public. There is a model of how the past is, and a lot of academic archaeology is about refining the model. It's not about changing the model radically. I'm not aware of any current which is about radically changing the model. It's just me, really.

To read a writer is for me not merely to get an idea of what he says, but to go off with him and travel in his company.

It's so easy, as a writer, to get stuck in your own head, to live in the little worlds you create. To forget that there are people out there reading your work, people who may be deeply affected by what you do, that you are writing not just for yourself, but for them.

I do feel like that's what a writer does, is he goes into other people's heads.

Fiction writers are strange beasts. They are, like all writers, observers first and foremost. Everything that happens to and around them is potential material for a story, and they look at it that way.