Writing Surprise Quotes

#1. Even if I never sold another book, I'd keep writing, because the stories are here, in my head. Stories that just need to be told. I love watching a plot unfold, and feeling the surprise when the unexpected happens.

Tess Gerritsen

#2. Writing about someone well known removes that obligation of defending it as a subject, but it also means that some of the surprise and freshness is already gone. It's so different - in some ways much harder for me.

Susan Orlean

#3. In general there should be gay characters in YA because a) surprise, there are gay folks everywhere and b) in my opinion as a father, there's not a damn thing wrong with my child encountering gay folks in her literature, because see point a).

John Scalzi

#4. The three rules of writing: 1. It's Work. 2. It's Work. 3. Surprise! It's Work.

John Scalzi

#5. Each day is a surprise - and each day I learn something wonderful and new. Both in writing thrillers and in reporting the news, I work to change the world a little bit. I want readers - and viewers - to be surprised and captivated and even inspired.

Hank Phillippi Ryan

#6. I like the busy-ness of office life. What I discovered, to my surprise, is that I love the solitary nature of writing. What happens is that you write when you're ready.

Joseph Kanon

#7. Write. Write every day. Write honestly. Write something that doesn't exist, and you wish did. Read. Learn. Study. Watch people. Listen to what they say, listen to how they say it and listen to what they do not say. Surprise yourself. Scare yourself.

Brian Michael Bendis

#8. During my past career as a journalist, I relished writing obits and equally dreaded phoning relatives for the necessary facts. But to my surprise and great relief, they often wanted to talk - they wanted their recently deceased loved ones recorded in print.

Tom Rachman

#9. I must admit it's a surprise to find myself still here, still talking to you. I prefer to think of it as talking, although of course it isn't: I'm saying nothing, you're hearing nothing. The only thing between us is this black line: a thread thrown onto the empty page, into the empty air.

Margaret Atwood

#10. This will surprise some of your readers, but my primary interest is not with computer security. I am primarily interested in writing software that works as intended.

Wietse Venema

#11. Whatever extra there is in me at any given moment isn't fully formed. I am hardly aware of it; it awaits the next book. It will - with luck - come to me during the actual writing, and it will take me by surprise.

V.S. Naipaul

#12. I had a novel in the back of my mind when I won an Ian St James story competition in 1993. At the award ceremony an agent asked me if I was writing a novel. I showed her four or five chapters of what would become 'Behind the Scenes at the Museum' and to my surprise she auctioned them off.

Kate Atkinson

#13. Dr. Paul Ekman, who worked in San Francisco - still does - which is where Pixar Animation Studios is, he had early in his career identified six. That felt like a nice, manageable number of guys to design and write for. It was anger, fear, sadness, disgust, joy and surprise.

Pete Docter

#14. I'm not a standup. I didn't start off as a writer, I learned to write through improvisation, and so that's the part of the show that can most surprise me. The written part of the show, I know I can get wrong. You can't really get the interview "wrong."

Stephen Colbert

#15. Life has much uneasiness; that is certain. Always remember that, and it will never surprise you. - James Boswell

Mason Currey

#16. A warm sunny evening, the plash and gurgle of the waves in the rock pools, the rush of the cold gin. I thought for the first time of my novel, abandoned, all these years, and I came up, unprompted, with the perfect title. Octet. Octet by Logan Mountstuart. Perhaps I will surprise them all, yet.

William Boyd

#17. That element of surprise is what I look for when I am writing. It is my way of judging what I am doing - which is never an easy thing to do.

V.S. Naipaul

#18. There's a sureness to good writing even when what's being written about doesn't make all that much sense. It's the sureness of the so-called seat of an accomplished horseback rider or a sailor coming about in a strong wind. The words have both muscle and grace, familiarity and surprise.

Anne Bernays

#19. There's this element of surprise when you're writing songs, like it's something outside of you that you get to be part of. And it's just exciting. And that's why I keep writing - because I like that feeling.

Nathaniel Rateliff

#20. What has a writer to be bombastic about? Whatever good a man may write is the consequence of accident, luck, or surprise, and nobody is more surprised than an honest writer when he makes a good phrase or says something truthful.

Edward Dahlberg

#21. MIke Lee writes with honesty, penetration, wit and the ability to surprise the reader with an unexpected turn from time to time that enriches the experience.

Norman Mailer

#22. I don't know what the secret is when I am writing it - it really is a surprise to me.

Lee Child

#23. No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader.

Robert Frost

#24. Author says writing about Jesus is difficult because it is like writing about a friend who is still liable to surprise us.

N. T. Wright

#25. The monotony of staying in one place is the best thing for writing a novel. Having regular habits, a kind of security, but especially no big surprises, no shocks.

Paul Theroux

#26. Much to my surprise, there's a sense for people in the cable industry that fiction writers might actually be good at script writing. You can write dialogue!

Matthew Specktor

#27. I've been obsessed with stories since I was a kid so it's no surprise that I ended up writing for a living.

Sara Sheridan

#28. Groupon as a company - it's built into the business model - is about surprise. A new deal that surprises you every day. We've carried that over to our brand, in the writing and the marketing that we do, and in the internal corporate culture.

Andrew Mason

#29. During those days of whirling about the globe, I had an epiphany: travel was the only area of my life where I had no expectations. I anticipated nothing while fully engaging each moment. What bred adventure, surprise and deep experience was not knowing, surrendering to now and letting go of control.

Gina Greenlee

#30. Don't think of what you have to do, don't consider how to carry it out!" he exclaimed. "The shot will only go smoothly when it takes the archer himself by surprise.

Eugen Herrigel

#31. Humans are not as unsophisticated as mulch wrigglers, they can see the writing on the wall. Is it any surprise, that among the ones who look outward, the real debate is not over whether to run, but over how far and how fast?

Charles Stross

#32. To try something longer, I entered a half-hour radio drama contest with the national public broadcaster, CBC. To my surprise, I won. And that opened doors in film and television, because that broadcaster was looking to cultivate new Canadian talent, especially women who could write.

Karen Walton

#33. Let your story grow. Let it surprise you, and it will certainly surprise your readers.

M. Kirin

#34. She would smile and show no surprise, convinced as she was, the same as I, that casual meetings are apt to be just the opposite, and that people who make dates are the same kind who need lines on their writing paper, or who always squeeze up from the bottom on a tube of toothpaste.

Julio Cortazar

#35. The flow of writing is always a surprise and a challenge. Click the computer on and I am 17 again, wanting to write and not knowing if I can.

Don Murray

#36. I write intuitively, and with most of my plays, I don't know what is always going to happen. This means I can sometimes go off on a wrong tangent, and with luck then rewrite it in a better direction. But it means I sometimes surprise myself as I'm going along.

Christopher Durang

#37. Enter the writing process with a childlike sense of wonder and discovery. Let it surprise you.

Charles Ghigna

#38. Surprise is when a prime minister is assassinated during his speech. Suspense is when an assassin lurks while the prime minister speaks. Balancing surprise and suspense is the job of the thriller writer.

Ashwin Sanghi

#39. To have attracted readers is the most magical part of my writing life. I was not expecting you to show up when I wrote my first books. It took me by surprise. It filled me with gratitude. It still does.

Pat Conroy

#40. What we write should surprise us, the way life surprises us.

Marty Rubin

#41. With writing music, as a general rule I'm looking for something that surprises me, that doesn't fall within what's easy for me.

John Maus

#42. If you are in difficulties with a book, try the element of surprise: attack it at an hour when it isn't expecting it.

H.G.Wells

#43. I'm writing a new love story, set in eastern North Carolina. Surprise, surprise, huh?

Nicholas Sparks

#44. One of the elements of writing that is most delightful to the engaged reader is the element of surprise. And one of the ways to surprise the reader is to set up an expectation that you then veer away from it at the last moment. A stitch in time saves the penny earned. Or something like that.

Douglas Wilson

#45. What I love about drafts is the experimental nature of them. The draft is what you know about writing a poem running up against what you don't know about the subject. If you're lucky, you get to surprise yourself.

Cornelius Eady

#46. I wish you'd stop writing people off before they have a chance to surprise you.

Heidi Cullinan

#47. Always mystify, torture, mislead, and surprise the audience as much as possible.

Don Roff

#48. A story to me must have some surprise ... I must have a passion to write the story.

Isaac Bashevis Singer

#49. The inspiration for my novels comes from the depths of a creative well, based on asking myself questions over and over. I try to write something different each time I sit down to write; I try to surprise the readers.

Nicholas Sparks

#50. For me the initial delight is in the surprise of remembering something I didn't know I knew. I have never started a poem yet whose end I knew. Writing ... is discovering.

Robert Frost

#51. If you use the original World Wide Web program, you never see a URL or have to deal with HTML. That was a surprise to me - that people were prepared to painstakingly write HTML.

Tim Berners-Lee

#52. Writing the record for me - every record is almost a surprise. When people ask me, what are the themes you want to grapple with on this one? I have no idea until the record's finished.

Alanis Morissette

#53. Readers can surprise you. Many times, they notice layers in your stories, that even you were not aware of while writing.

Shon Mehta

#54. There were no absolutes in fiction, no certain way to deliver what was needed. So it was no surprise most technical writers considered novel-writing a gateway to madness.

S.A. Reid

#55. Children's book writers tend to feel quite superior, and adult writers tend to feel they wouldn't know how to write a children's book - which might surprise you because I think a lot of people think it's the other way around.

John Boyne

#56. If you haven't surprised yourself, you haven't written.

Eudora Welty

#57. There is nothing I love more than traveling to a place where I know nobody, and where everything will be a surprise, and then writing about it. It's like having a new lover - even the parts you aren't crazy about have the crackling fascination of the unfamiliar.

Ariel Levy