Top 100 Quotes About Story Writing
#1. I'll give you the whole secret to short story writing. Here it is. Rule 1: Write stories that please yourself. There is no Rule 2.
O. Henry
#2. Daydreaming had started me on the way; but story writing once I was truly in its grip, took me and shook me awake.
Eudora Welty
#3. The greatest compliment a writer can be given is that a story and character hold a reader spellbound. I'm caught up in the story writing and I miss a good deal of sleep thinking about it and working out the plot points.
Iris Johansen
#4. I feel that discussing story-writing in terms of plot, character, and theme is like trying to describe the expression on a face by saying where the eyes, nose, and mouth are.
Flannery O'Connor
#5. I used to do a lot of story writing and storytelling coming up through grade school. By the time I got to college, I decided that I wanted to perform as well, and that's where I started.
Rhea Seehorn
#6. I knew nothing about the technique of story writing, and now, after eighteen years of writing, I still know nothing about the technique, although with the publication of my new novel, "Tarzan and the Lost Empire", there are 31 books on my list.
Edgar Rice Burroughs
#7. Overall, I was generally "delighted" with the book's story -- writing, theme, plot, etc. Seriously, though, I really did revel in it. After all, "what is a book for if not for our enjoyment?
Chris Mentillo
#8. If there is a magic in story writing, and I am convinced there is, no one has ever been able to reduce it to a recipe that can be passed from one person to another.
John Steinbeck
#9. It's a distillation of all I know about writing: short-story writing, screenwriting, journalism - everything. There is no future in the novel, so far as I can see. I'm trying to show where writing is going to be. I may not get there, but I will point the way." In
Gerald Clarke
#10. For the last 20 years of my life, I've had the mantra to do amazing parts with amazing people in amazing projects, so I'm attracted to good story, writing and character and good people. That's what I'm always searching for and I don't think that's ever going to change.
John Hawkes
#11. The object of fiction isn't grammatical correctness but to make the reader welcome and then tell a story ... Writing is seduction. Good talk is part of seduction.
Stephen King
#13. I knew little about short story writing then so it was rough going, but I did find the experience very memorable.
Haruki Murakami
#14. I like the story writing process. I usually use someone who has been trained for structure to take the story that I actually want, place those elements in the right places.
Curtis Jackson
#15. I do think that short story writing is often a matter of luck.
Robert Sheckley
#16. Short-story writing requires an exquisite sense of balance. Novelists, frankly, can get away with more. A novel can have a dull spot or two, because the reader has made a different commitment.
Lynn Abbey
#17. Ms. Scarlett always delivers hot, sexy alphas and this isn't any different. Holy smokes, is this ever HOT! Love her writing and the way she spins a story but adds the HOT factor. Her alphas are phenomenal! - JC
Scarlett Avery
#18. Writing a story I am just trying to find some little interesting thing to start out with: something small, even trivial. Preferably something that doesn't have a lot of thematic or political baggage - a little crumb that is interesting.
George Saunders
#19. Accept nothing. Challenge everything.
A.D. Posey
#20. When writing a book what is more important? Grammar and spelling or telling a great story? I know which I would choose.
Samuel Colbran
#21. So if you are writing a story where love is the meaning, where love is the highest and best of all, where love is the point, then you have to allow each person a choice.
John Eldredge
#22. I conceive that the right way to write a story for boys is to write so that it will not only interest boys but strongly interest any man who has ever been a boy. That immensely enlarges the audience.
Mark Twain
#23. There is nothing to me but you. I know it's pathetic but, oh darling, it's true.
F.K. Preston
#24. I have from the first felt sure that the writer, when he sits down to commence his novel, should do so, not because he has to tell a story, but because he has a story to tell. The novelist's first novel will generally have sprung from the right cause.
Anthony Trollope
#25. Read a short story every day. By the end of the week you would have read volumes of stories.
Lailah Gifty Akita
#26. Plot joined the expedition unwooed, as a necessary companion. It was not the scout. The scout was a certain mood. I followed that mood, and let the shape of the story flow from that.
Bonnie Friedman
#27. Never tell your reader what your story is about. Reading is a participatory sport. People do it because they are intelligent and enjoy figuring things out for themselves.
(advicetowriters)
George V. Higgins
#28. You will find the greatest happiness in letting yourself be.
A.D. Posey
#29. I love being able to create characters, give them problems, and make sure everything turns out right in the end. Writing gives me limitless opportunity to study the human condition, and a love story with a positive ending always lifts my spirits and warms my heart.
Jennie Adams
#30. Observing people. A spark of idea for a story sometimes comes from the simple act of observation.
Ika Natassa
#31. The challenge of the writer is to transform - artistically and imaginatively - a unique personal experience into a universal, meaningful story.
Hillel F. Damron
#33. I always plan the whole story in some detail, long before I start writing the actual thing. But even doing that, I find that there is plenty of room for spontaneity. Often the characters will lead the story off in a direction I hadn't originally intended!
Raymond Buckland
#34. Nothing good about this but it's title. A priggish little yarn. And Hidden Riches is not a story
it's a machine. It creaks. It never made me forget for one instant that it was a story. Hence it isn't a story.
L.M. Montgomery
#35. The story unfolded quickly as I typed, in a way I was becoming familiar with. There was something about putting the truth on paper, bringing facts into the light of day where everyone could look at them, that made my fingers move faster -- it was becoming one of my favorite sensations on earth.
Gwenda Bond
#36. I was dressed up as a witch for Halloween, and wanted to write a story about my black cat before I went out trick-or-treating. I think it went out with the trash the next day.
Robin Hobb
#37. If you're a writer, write. You just keep writing. And if you're a filmmaker, you keep doing what you can to keep telling your stories; you don't stay on the one. Keep moving forward and doing what you can to tell whatever story you can tell, be it via writing, be it via filming it.
Dana Brunetti
#38. When I start, I have a feeling for the characters, and maybe the shape of the story. Sometimes I might even have the last sentence in mind. But, no book I've ever written has ever ended the way I thought it would. Characters disappear, others come forward. Once you start writing, everything changes.
Paul Auster
#39. You can't be a serious writer of fiction unless you believe the story you are telling.
Norman Mailer
#40. Don't look.
See.
Don't think.
Feel.
Don't hear.
Listen.
Pay attention
Miracles really do happen every day
A.D. Posey
#41. Rewriting is the crucible where books are born.
Cathryn Louis
#42. Energy will go into what you love, and what you love will grow. Go for a walk and watch it bloom.
A.D. Posey
#43. The voices in my head wouldn't shut up, so I let them write their story.
Shandy L. Kurth
#44. Headline writing is tough because often times you are given a predetermined number of spaces and words depending on the layout and the type of the story.
Jennifer Lee
#45. I haven't thought about writing so much as potentially producing and finding my own projects to get into production. I want to be able to buy the rights to a story that I have read or a book that I have read.
Mandy Moore
#46. If you write one story, it may be bad; if you write a hundred, you have the odds in your favor.
Edgar Rice Burroughs
#47. I see the whole thing popping and parenthesizing in every direction, the story of that house and that kitchen.
Jack Kerouac
#48. I think the business of writing a great deal of it is the business of paying attention to your characters, to the world they live in, to the story you have to tell, but just a kind of deep attention and out of that if you pay attention properly the story will tell you what it needs.
Salman Rushdie
#49. History is about the untold story, and writing historical fiction is a wonderful way to present the past in a compelling and entertaining way.
Paul W. Feenstra
#50. It is the writer's job to craft a story so compelling that strangers will pay to hear it.
Seeley James
#51. Now and again thousands of memories
converge, harmonize,
arrange themselves around a central idea
in a coherent form,
and I write a story.
Katherine Anne Porter
#52. You and you alone are the only person that can live the life that writes the story that you were meant to tell. And the world needs your story because the world needs your voice.
Kerry Washington
#53. Writers do well to carefully attend to those moments of inspiration, because chances are that they're writing from a very deep place. The subsequent search that ensues to continually attend to that voice that you hear is what is going to give the story drive.
Adam Ross
#54. There is nothing like been consumed by the blazing fire of untold story.
Lailah Gifty Akita
#55. Teens want to read something that isn't a lie; we adults wish we could put our heads under the blankets and hide from the scary story we're writing for our kids.
Paolo Bacigalupi
#56. The biggest problem is that people want to tell the whole story, and they write letters that are way longer than anything I could possibly run.
Emily Yoffe
#57. I'm the least confident person in so many ways. But I believed that if somebody gave me the chance to tell a story, I would tell a story [well enough] that the person who gave me the chance would get their money back.
Joss Whedon
#58. Because of an instability at my own core, it comforts me to live, fixed, within a story. If reading is our consolation for having been allotted only one life, I find that writing oneself into a fictional world is even more comforting.
Norman Lock
#59. The page is to the story as the seed is to the flower.
Bankei Yotaku
#60. You know, I've always wrote my best stuff when it takes me hardly any time at all. Actually I wrote ... this is actually a really funny story ... 'Ghost Of Vincent Price', I've been wanting to write a song about Vincent Price coz he's one of my favorite characters of all time.
Wednesday 13
#61. You write a book and you finish the book. That's your job done, right? You win the Booker and you have a whole new job. You have to be the thing, right? So instead of writing the story, you somehow are the story. And that I found that sort of terrible.
Anne Enright
#62. Every story I've written was written because I had to write it. Writing stories is like breathing for me; it is my life.
Ray Bradbury
#63. I started writing to please myself, a story I would like to read, and that is still true.
Jean M. Auel
#65. For the source of the short story is usually lyrical. And all writers speak from, and speak to, emotions eternally the same in all of us: love, pity, terror do not show favorites or leave any of us out.
Eudora Welty
#66. The world before us is a postcard, and I imagine the story we are writing on it.
Mary E. Pearson
#67. Search your own life for the story only you can tell. The best thing about writing from life is that you can be sure of using original material. And no research is needed beyond the time you spend looking deep inside your own heart.
Elizabeth Held Forsyth
#68. In my case, if I start out by thinking about the plot, things don't go well. Small points, such as my impression of what is likely to occur, do come to mind, but I let the rest of the story take its own course. I don't want to spend as long as two years writing a story whose plot I already know.
Haruki Murakami
#69. What draws us into a story and keeps us there is the firing of our dopamine neurons, signaling that intriguing information is on the way.
Lisa Cron
#70. For my type of story and my kind of writing, I think 'Vanity Fair' is the right forum.
Dominick Dunne
#72. When writing, don't try to lead the story; let the story lead you.
Giuseppe Bianco
#73. I like that it's challenging - that when I'm writing, I feel as if I'm pouring everything I have into the story until there's nothing left and I have to begin thinking about a new world and set of circumstances to research and explore.
Molly Antopol
#74. Writing a short story is a little like walking into a dark room, finding a light and turning it on. The light is the end of the story.
Dan Chaon
#75. Orwell says somewhere that no one ever writes the real story of their life. The real story of a life is the story of its humiliations.
Vijay Seshadri
#76. The writing can be its own reward, as you discover more things that you can do. It counts a lot, though, when a story connects with a reader and they take the time to tell me about it.
Nick Earls
#77. Let your story grow. Let it surprise you, and it will certainly surprise your readers.
M. Kirin
#78. One of my book-reading friends used the term "our story unfolds" when describing a paper he was writing. He became somewhat less of a friend right at that moment.
Tommy Greenwald
#79. What I am trying to achieve is a voice sitting by a fireplace telling you a story on a winter's evening.
Truman Capote
#80. Nobody with any real sense of humor *can* write a love story ... Shakespeare is the exception that proves the rule. (90-91)
L.M. Montgomery
#81. Basically you come up with the fictional idea and you start writing that story, but then in order to write it and to make it seem real, you sometimes put your own memories in. Even if it's a character that's very different from you.
Jeffrey Eugenides
#82. I'd love to take a stab at writing videogames. There are a lot of storytelling opportunities that really aren't being taken advantage of in that field. I'd like to experiment with telling a truly non-linear story.
Patrick Rothfuss
#83. It's my attempt to remain invisible, not distract the reader from the story with obvious writing.
Elmore Leonard
#84. You've gone far away to a place with no horses and very little grass, and you're studying how to write a story with a happy ending. If you can write that ending for yourself, maybe you can come back.
Jennifer Echols
#85. When I first started writing, I did mostly short fiction, and I'd work on a short story and get near to being done and have no idea what I'd work on next, and then I'd panic.
Ann Leckie
#86. The story of the English writing system is so intriguing, and the histories behind individual words so fascinating, that anyone who dares to treat spelling as an adventure will find the journey rewarding.
David Crystal
#87. Nothing ever really ends. That's the horrible part of being in the short-story business - you have to be a real expert on ends. Nothing in real life ends. 'Millicent at last understands.' Nobody ever understands.
Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
#88. I keep the description basic as it allows you to mould the story around your life.
Airam
#89. There are very few works of fiction that take you inside the heads of all characters. I tell my writing students that one of the most important questions to ask yourself when you begin writing a story is this: Whose story is it? You need to make a commitment to one or perhaps a few characters.
Julia Glass
#90. It's always more than just a story.
A.D. Posey
#91. We should all live as though someone is writing a book about us.
J.R. Rim
#92. Never submit an idea or chapter to an editor or publisher, no matter how much he would like you to. Writing from the approved idea is (another) gravely serious time-waster. This is your story. Try and find out what your editor wants in advance, but then try and give it to him in one piece.
John Creasey
#93. The person you are (in total, at that moment in time) is what creates the story you're writing. It's infused in every piece of punctuation, in the plot, in the most minor character who crosses the page. It's all your voice.
Victor LaValle
#94. I think it's really hard to make songs that pursue an agenda. You can kind of do it a little bit through a character, so the character gives voice to something or their story, the story of the character tells you something, but, for me anyway, it's really hard to write directly about politics.
David Byrne
#95. Budget grows out of the story. If you're writing a story with people caught in an elevator for most of the film, you're pretty sure it won't be a $200 million movie.
J. Michael Straczynski
#96. It took me seven years of writing before I published my first story. And then, the publications trickled in over the next five years.
Rob Roberge
#97. It's amazing what you can do when you get creative.
A.D. Posey
#98. Whenever I started writing music, it just naturally led itself there. As I started to tell my story, it's where my home was. It's just a very natural choice.
Jamie Lynn Spears
#99. I think one of the biggest mistakes you can make as a writer is to follow your initial [writing] plan too stringently. A story needs room to grow and evolve.
Patrick Rothfuss
#100. Your life should reflect your heart.
A.D. Posey
Famous Authors
Popular Topics
Scroll to Top
