Top 100 Quotes About Writing A Story
#1. 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
#2. 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
#3. 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
#4. 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
#5. 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
#6. I love bouncing my words off of someone else's, and the fact that writing a story with someone else guarantees you'll get something you never, ever would have written on your own.
David Levithan
#7. The story was such that I couldn't make a graceful ending and then make a graceful new beginning. I could have, but I didn't want to. So, it isn't the most graceful way of writing a story. This new story is, I think, is pretty good stuff. I'm pleased with it anyway.
Jack Vance
#8. After writing a story I was always empty and both sad and happy, as though I had made love, and I was sure this was a very good story although I would not know truly how good until I read it over the next day.
Ernest Hemingway,
#9. If you are writing a story and trying to draw an audience to come and hear you tell it, it's got to in some way relate to them. Who wants to come and hear about your specific problems? It's not therapy - it's supposed to be a communal piece of entertainment.
Matt Damon
#10. Writing a story no one else dares to say, sits outside my comfort zone, is one of the biggest challenges I'm facing as an author.
Veronica Purcell
#11. After writing a story, I wipe the blood off my hands wondering,"What have I done?
Harold Kempka
#12. If I'm writing a story and you're reading it, or vice versa, you took time out of your day to pick up my book. I think the one thing that will kill that relationship is if you feel me condescending to you in the process.
George Saunders
#13. Writing a story, regardless of length, begins always with a single word.
Don Roff
#14. When you're writing a story or an actor playing a role, you should never think of your characters as heroes or villains. You have to think of them as people first.
Morgan Neville
#15. Writing a story is like going down a path in the woods. You follow the path. You don't worry about getting lost. You just go.
Jan Brett
#16. Writing a story is pretty all-consuming for me - it feels a lot like method acting, and for the eight or twelve or fifteen months that I'm working on a story, I'm constantly thinking about how my narrator would react to whatever tangled situation I'm in.
Molly Antopol
#17. Writing a story, you understand, is not done by consensus. But we do learn from each other, and we remind ourselves how important this work we're doing is.
John Dufresne
#18. In her room at the prow of the house
Where light breaks,
and the windows are tossed with linden,
My daughter is writing a story..
Wesley Banks
#19. I have to trick myself into writing a story - impose some arbitrary constraint to distract me from the constraints of my past habits or my fear that I don't have much to say.
Catherine Brady
#20. Writing a story is like giving birth with the only difference that you enjoy the process.
Self
#21. I can't conceive of nursing babies and taking care of children and writing, too. I know there are writers that do that, but I'm too single-minded. I can't stand to be interrupted, whether I'm writing a story or dressing a child.
Ellen Gilchrist
#22. The process of writing a story isn't about fair. It's about getting to the heart of your story, getting to the truth of it. It transcends ideals of fair and unfair, right and wrong.
Lynn Coady
#23. Writing a story bends time and warps reality. It gives the writer prior knowledge in the reader's future...
RO Smit
#24. Writing a story is like ruling the world. Except it's even better. How many rulers out there that you know can tell people what they say?
VanillaCreamPie8888
#25. I don't think in terms of optimism and pessimism when writing a story. I am telling a story.
Doris Lessing
#26. Writing a story is like getting to share a piece of every daydream you've ever had.
Giuseppe Bianco
#27. It is very enjoyable, writing a story. You get this idea. It takes hold of you. And then you spend day and night thinking about how to do it. And then you do it. And much later, you think, 'Oh, yes. That's an interesting question.'
Doris Lessing
#28. Because I don't work with an outline, writing a story is like crossing a stream, now I'm on this rock, now I'm on this rock, now I'm on this rock.
Ann Beattie
#29. We all hate moral ambiguity in some sense, and yet it is also absolutely necessary. In writing a story, it is the place where I begin.
Amy Tan
#30. It took a lot to understand that the interest in both writing a story and reading it is not in the objective dangers someone takes. You don't have to fight snakes or wake up in a strange apartment to have a story; it's about what goes on inside your mind and soul.
Etgar Keret
#31. I often think I am a better person because I lived for many years of my life with a flashlight. I have developed skills I did not think were possible - bathing with a cup of water by candlelight, for instance, and writing a story with a headlamp on.
Janine Di Giovanni
#32. I used to love to make things - you couldn't drag me away for dinner because I was always writing a story or something.
Fiona Apple
#33. Actually, that's one of the things I was thinking about writing a story about me, loosely based or autobiographical. I just don't want to be like some people that are in their twenties and writing autobiographies.
Matthew McGrory
#34. Forgiveness and faith are like writing a story. They take time, effort, revisions. When
Daisy Hernandez
#35. Perhaps writing a story or a novel was not something that should be done for money, or to win praise, but for the sheer sensual pleasure of it. I liked that idea. It made me want to write lots of stories, to give myself that pleasure.
Vanessa Wu
#36. When you're writing a story in bits and pieces, month in and month out, there really isn't time or space for reflection, no room to learn what those scripts had to teach you.
J. Michael Straczynski
#37. Love is anticipation and memory, uncertainty and longing. It's unreasonable, of course. Nothing begins with so much excitement and hope and pleasure as love, except maybe writing a story. And nothing fails as often, except writing stories. And like a story, love must be troubled to be interesting.
John Dufresne
#38. I love learning about different dialects and I own all sorts of regional and time-period slang dictionaries. I often browse through relevant ones while writing a story. I also read a lot of diaries and oral histories.
Ron Rash
#39. If you're writing a story and YOU can't wait to see how it all pans out, then you are doing something right.
Giuseppe Bianco
#40. When I'm writing a story, which takes me a year or more, I can feel my character living with me - they're responding to whatever funny, familial, or social situation I'm in, and I think about their responses constantly.
Molly Antopol
#41. When I am writing a story it feels as real as the life I am experiencing off the page. It's an emotional illusion, I guess.
Tayari Jones
#42. The hardest part of writing a story is making bad things happen to good people. The hardest part of writing horror is knowing that it won't really get better for them.
Allison M. Dickson
#43. Sasha tipped back her head to look at him. She made a point of doing this now and then, just to remind Coz that she wasn't an idiot - she knew the question had a right answer. She and Coz were collaborators, writing a story whose end had already been determined: she would get well.
Jennifer Egan
#44. I never know, when I start writing a story, what's going to happen, or how it will all get sorted out.
Jacqueline Woodson
#45. The difference between writing a story and simply relating past events is that a story, in order to be acceptable, must have shape and meaning. It is the old idea that art is the bringing of order out of chaos ...
Katherine Paterson
#46. I started drawing at a very young age. Writing a story wasn't satisfying, but to actually draw our own world - it's like controlling your own dreams.
Daniel Clowes
#47. Writing a story is kind of like surfing, as opposed to the novel, where you use a GPS to get somewhere. With surfing, you kind of jump.
Etgar Keret
#48. I'm sure it's like you writing a story. If you don't care, how can the reader?
Cecelia Ahern
#49. I'm just writing a story that I want to read.
Jean M. Auel
#50. 'Bless Me, Ultima' is quite autobiographical in the sense that I was writing a story about my childhood, my hometown where I grew up, Santa Rosa, New Mexico, on Old Highway 66 and the Pecos River. So a great deal of that environment, landscape, people, got thrown in the novel.
Rudolfo Anaya
#51. I approached writing a story for the CBC Literary Awards as a mercenary venture - $5,000 for one story, not bad. Now, how do you win it? Jurors are wading through skyscrapers of paper, looking for one story that stands out.
Michael Winter
#52. When I get a script and do my work, and then show up on set and work, it's the same zone that I'm in when I'm in front of a canvas, or when I'm writing a story about one of my paintings, or when I'm playing music. Whatever I'm doing at any given time, it's the same exact zone.
Michael Marisi Ornstein
#53. Writing a story about a place calls that world into existence. Sometimes, as the author, you accompany it for a while. But even as you write, the characters have minds of their own.
Alan McCluskey
#54. While I would agree that I write about serious subjects, and that they're not necessarily the most pleasant subjects or even the most pleasant people, as a writer I just think about the humorous aspects of these things - that's what keeps me going when I'm writing a story.
Ann Beattie
#55. I don't teach anymore, but I can still clearly see fifth period after lunch - that's a real tough time to teach. And I tried to imagine writing a story that would appeal to those kids - even when they're tired, even when they're bouncing off the walls.
Rick Riordan
#56. I had written a story. I wrote the story out of some desperation, really, and I didn't know I was writing a story, and it took me years. And when I finished, a friend of mine had the idea that the story should be read as a monologue in a theater.
Deborah Eisenberg
#57. You know, the process of making a documentary is one of discovery, and like writing a story, you follow a lead and that leads you to something else and then by the time you finish, the story is nothing like you expected.
William Shatner
#58. Writing a story or a novel is one way of discovering sequence in experience, of stumbling upon cause and effect in the happenings of a writer's own life.
Eudora Welty
#59. Writing a story requires you to understand how the world works, how characters think, how their emotions drive them to do surprising things, and so on. In other words, as a writer, you have to be more than a stylist. You need to learn to become a master of storytelling.
David Farland
#60. 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
#61. Accept nothing. Challenge everything.
A.D. Posey
#62. When writing a book what is more important? Grammar and spelling or telling a great story? I know which I would choose.
Samuel Colbran
#63. 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
#64. 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
#65. Read a short story every day. By the end of the week you would have read volumes of stories.
Lailah Gifty Akita
#66. 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
#67. 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
#68. You will find the greatest happiness in letting yourself be.
A.D. Posey
#69. 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
#70. Observing people. A spark of idea for a story sometimes comes from the simple act of observation.
Ika Natassa
#71. The challenge of the writer is to transform - artistically and imaginatively - a unique personal experience into a universal, meaningful story.
Hillel F. Damron
#72. 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
#73. 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
#74. 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
#75. 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
#76. 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
#77. 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
#78. You can't be a serious writer of fiction unless you believe the story you are telling.
Norman Mailer
#79. Don't look.
See.
Don't think.
Feel.
Don't hear.
Listen.
Pay attention
Miracles really do happen every day
A.D. Posey
#80. Energy will go into what you love, and what you love will grow. Go for a walk and watch it bloom.
A.D. Posey
#81. 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
#82. 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
#83. If you write one story, it may be bad; if you write a hundred, you have the odds in your favor.
Edgar Rice Burroughs
#84. 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
#85. 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
#86. It is the writer's job to craft a story so compelling that strangers will pay to hear it.
Seeley James
#87. 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
#88. 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
#89. 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
#90. 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
#91. 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
#92. 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
#93. 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
#94. I started writing to please myself, a story I would like to read, and that is still true.
Jean M. Auel
#95. The world before us is a postcard, and I imagine the story we are writing on it.
Mary E. Pearson
#96. 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
#98. 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
#99. 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
#100. 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
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