Writing Tips Quotes

Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere. Start by getting something—anything—down on paper. What I’ve learned to do when I sit down to work on a shitty first draft is to quiet the voices in my head.

Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere. Start by getting something-anything-down on paper. A friend of mine says that the first draft is the down draft-you just get it down. The second draft is the up draft-you fix it up. You try to say what you have to say more accurately. And the third draft is the dental draft, where you check every tooth, to see if it's loose or cramped or decayed, or even, God help us, healthy.

You want to be a writer, don't know how or when? Find a quiet place, use a humble pen.

Young writers reasonably say, 'I don't know what to write about,' so writing about yourself is a very literal way to begin.

Teaching other people to write is not something I can do. The only kind of advice I can give them will be trite by its nature. Of course, read a lot, write a lot. The kind of advice I wish I had been given is all of a practical nature, having to do with publishers and agents.

Maugham then offers the greatest advice anyone could give to a young author: "At the end of an interrogation sentence, place a question mark. You'd be surprised how effective it can be."

What's the trick to writing a great female character? Make her human.

James Blish told me I had the worst case of "said bookism" (that is, using every word except said to indicate dialogue). He told me to limit the verbs to said, replied, asked, and answered and only when absolutely necessary.

Make no a complete sentence.

I believe the road to hell is paved with adverbs, and I will shout it from the rooftops.

Most people write the same sentence over and over again. The same number of words-say, 8-10, or 10-12. The same sentence structure. Try to become stretchy-if you generally write 8 words, throw a 20 word sentence in there, and a few three-word shorties. If you're generally a 20 word writer, make sure you throw in some threes, fivers and sevens, just to keep the reader from going crosseyed.

[Ernest ]Hemingway always said, "Write about what you know." I think you can do that, and if you want to write about what you don't know, you can. It just takes a lot more work.

All I ask is that you do as well as you can, and remember that, while to write adverbs is human, to write he said or she said is divine.

The simple idiot's advice I give to screenwriters who say they want to sell a screenplay is, 'Write good.'

Find the key emotion; this may be all you need know to find your short story.

The most basic definition of a story is 'Somebody wants something and something's in his way,' and I'm more likely to be engaged if I at least think I know what those two 'somethings' are. They can be simple, they can be complex, but - particularly if you're a beginning writer - I'd rather you err on the side of revealing too much than too little.

Atticus told me to delete the adjectives and I'd have the facts.

All my novels are rooted in their time and in their place. The place of my novels is Israel, almost without exception. Almost without exception, my novels are rooted in Israel because that's the place I know well. And, that's my gutsy advice to any young writer: write only about what you know well. Don't write about that which you don't know.

Don't be scared of 'said.' Writers sometimes go looking for alternatives because they worry that 'he said' and 'she said' will feel repetitive if they're used all the time, but I swear, they won't.

You should write, write, write every day, and learn to edit and pare it right back so you're proud of every sentence, and each one is either being useful or beautiful, but hopefully both.

...as for helping me in the outside world, the Convent taught me only that if you spit on a pencil eraser, it will erase ink.

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

Rule one: Write about settings you're familiar with.

The road to hell is paved with adverbs.

The rule is: don’t use commas like a stupid person. I mean it.