Tag Archives: plot

Elizabeth George (b. February 26): “I have to know the killer…”

26 Feb
george

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Elizabeth George, born 26 February 1949, is an American author of mystery novels set in Great Britain. 11 of her novels have been adapted for television by the BBC as The Inspector Lynley Mysteries.

Quotes on writing:

  1. It is the job of the novelist to touch the reader.
  2. I wish that I’d known back then that a mastery of process would lead to a product. Then I probably wouldn’t have found it so frightening to write.
  3. I find it both fascinating and disconcerting when I discover yet another person who believes that writing can’t be taught. Frankly, I don’t understand this point of view.
  4. I have to know the killer, the victim and the motive when I begin. Then I start to create the characters and see how the novel takes shape based on what these people are like.
  5. Essentially and most simply put, plot is what the characters do to deal with the situation they’re in. It’s a logical sequence of events that grow from an initial incident that alters the status quo of the characters.
  6. Plotting is difficult for me, and always has been. I do that before I actually start writing, but I always do characters, and the arc of the story, first… You can’t do anything without a story arc. Where is it going to begin, where will it end.
  7. Lots of people want to have written; they don’t want to write. In other words, they want to see their name on the front cover of a book and their grinning picture on the back. But this is what comes at the end of a job, not at the beginning.

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John Irving (b. March 2nd): “You’ve got to get obsessed and stay obsessed.”

2 Mar
irving3

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John Irving, born 2 March 1942, is an American novelist and Academy Award-winning screenwriter. His novels include The World According to Garp, A Widow for One Year, The Cider House Rules, and A Prayer for Owen Meany. Five of his novels have been adapted to film. He won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for The Cider House Rules.

Quotes on writing

  1. Half my life is an act of revision. 
  2. You’ve got to get obsessed and stay obsessed. 
  3. I’m old-fashioned, a storyteller. I’m not an analyst and I’m not an intellectual.
  4. The building of the architecture of a novel – the craft of it – is something I never tire of.
  5. I’ve always preferred writing in longhand. I’ve always written first drafts in longhand.
  6. I write very quickly; I rewrite very slowly. It takes me nearly as long to rewrite a book as it does to get the first draft.
  7. Writing a novel is actually searching for victims. As I write I keep looking for casualties. The stories uncover the casualties. 
  8. I am compulsive about writing, I need to do it the way I need sleep and exercise and food and sex; I can go without it for a while, but then I need it.
  9. The way you define yourself as a writer is that you write every time you have a free minute. If you didn’t behave that way you would never do anything.
  10. I don’t begin a novel or a screenplay until I know the ending. And I don’t mean only that I have to know what happens. I mean that I have to hear the actual sentences. I have to know what atmosphere the words convey. 
  11. When I was still in prep school – 14, 15 – I started keeping notebooks, journals. I started writing, almost like landscape drawing or life drawing. I never kept a diary, I never wrote about my day and what happened to me, but I described things. 
  12. I am not attracted to writers by style. What style do Dickens, Grass, and Vonnegut have in common? How silly! I am attracted to what makes them angry, what makes them passionate, what outrages them, what they applaud and find sympathetic in human beings and what they detest about human beings, too. They are writers of great emotional range.
  13. You bet I write disaster fiction. We have compiled a disastrous record on this planet, a record of stupidity and absurdity and self-abuse and self-aggrandizement and self-deception and pompousness and self-righteousness and cruelty and indifference beyond what any other species has demonstrated the capacity for, which is the capacity for all the above.
  14. Along the (writing) way accidents happen, detours get taken… But these are not “divine” accidents; I don’t believe in those. I believe you have constructive accidents en route through a novel only because you have mapped a clear way. If you have confidence that you have a clear direction to take, you always have confidence to explore other ways; if they prove to be mere digressions, you’ll recognize that and make the necessary revisions. The more you know about a book, the freer you can be to fool around. The less you know, the tighter you get.

Tags: , , , ,

Elizabeth George (b. February 26): “I have to know the killer…”

26 Feb
george

pinterest.com/pin/39406565465739058/

Elizabeth George, born 26 February 1949, is an American author of mystery novels set in Great Britain. 11 of her novels have been adapted for television by the BBC as The Inspector Lynley Mysteries.

Quotes on writing:

  1. It is the job of the novelist to touch the reader.
  2. I wish that I’d known back then that a mastery of process would lead to a product. Then I probably wouldn’t have found it so frightening to write.
  3. I find it both fascinating and disconcerting when I discover yet another person who believes that writing can’t be taught. Frankly, I don’t understand this point of view.
  4. I have to know the killer, the victim and the motive when I begin. Then I start to create the characters and see how the novel takes shape based on what these people are like.
  5. Essentially and most simply put, plot is what the characters do to deal with the situation they’re in. It’s a logical sequence of events that grow from an initial incident that alters the status quo of the characters.
  6. Plotting is difficult for me, and always has been. I do that before I actually start writing, but I always do characters, and the arc of the story, first… You can’t do anything without a story arc. Where is it going to begin, where will it end.
  7. Lots of people want to have written; they don’t want to write. In other words, they want to see their name on the front cover of a book and their grinning picture on the back. But this is what comes at the end of a job, not at the beginning.

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Jeffrey Archer (b. Apr 15): “There’s no substitute for reading great novelists.”

15 Apr
archer

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Jeffrey Archer, born 15 April 1940, is an English author and former politician. His books, starting with Kane and Abel, have sold at least 250 million copies worldwide.

Jeffrey Archer’s top 10 writing tips:

  1. Make time. “Decide when you’re going to write. Don’t be casual and only do it as and when it suits you. Don’t think you can write a novel after you’ve done a hard day’s work, it’s insulting to those professional novelists who spend their time doing nothing else.” 
  2. Be disciplined. “For example, I write from 6-8am, 10-12am, 2-4pm, 6-8pm. I keep that routine up for 40-50 days and handwrite every word. I then take a break and go back to it again a month later.” 
  3. Write what you know. “Don’t do vampires, wizards or ghosts because they’re in fashion. Jane Austen wrote about family life in a small village and gave us six of the greatest novels ever written.” 
  4. Get some fresh air. “I go for two long walks between sessions, for two reasons, physical and mental. The plot will buzz around in your mind while you are walking, continually churning over, which it can’t be while you’re actually writing.” 
  5. Do several drafts. “Do not imagine that the first draft of your book is the one that will be published. My latest novel, The Sins of the Father, was 14 drafts and took approximately 1000 hours.” 
  6. Be flexible. “If you think of something better half-way through the writing process, don’t be frightened to go back and incorporate it or even change the story completely.” 
  7. Seek opinions from professionals. “When you want an opinion on what you consider the finished script, seek it from a professional editor, an agent or someone you don’t know, through a third party. Do not seek an opinion from your wife, husband, partner, mistress or close friend. They will lie.” 
  8. Read the greats. “There is no substitute for reading great novelists, and instead of just enjoying their craft, think carefully about how they’ve achieved it. Do they spend pages on description, do they move the story on quickly, how do they make you turn the page? It’s all there in front of you if you look carefully, so at least when you try to do it, you have analysed how successful authors have managed it in the past.” 
  9. Stay fit. “If the body is a physical wreck – too much drinking, smoking, late nights – how can you expect the written word to be anything less than drunken, useless and tired?” 
  10. Don’t give up. “My first novel, Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less, was turned down by 14 publishers, ended up with an advance of £3,000 and on first printing took a year to sell 3,000 copies. It is still extremely rare for a first book to be a best-seller.”

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John Irving (b. Mar 2nd): “You’ve got to get obsessed and stay obsessed.”

2 Mar
irving3

pinterest.com/pin/39406565465762001/

John Irving, born 2 March 1942, is an American novelist and Academy Award-winning screenwriter. His novels include The World According to Garp, A Widow for One Year, The Cider House Rules, and A Prayer for Owen Meany. Five of his novels have been adapted to film. He won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for The Cider House Rules.

Quotes on writing

  1. Half my life is an act of revision. 
  2. You’ve got to get obsessed and stay obsessed. 
  3. I’m old-fashioned, a storyteller. I’m not an analyst and I’m not an intellectual.
  4. The building of the architecture of a novel – the craft of it – is something I never tire of.
  5. I’ve always preferred writing in longhand. I’ve always written first drafts in longhand.
  6. I write very quickly; I rewrite very slowly. It takes me nearly as long to rewrite a book as it does to get the first draft.
  7. Writing a novel is actually searching for victims. As I write I keep looking for casualties. The stories uncover the casualties. 
  8. I am compulsive about writing, I need to do it the way I need sleep and exercise and food and sex; I can go without it for a while, but then I need it.
  9. The way you define yourself as a writer is that you write every time you have a free minute. If you didn’t behave that way you would never do anything.
  10. I don’t begin a novel or a screenplay until I know the ending. And I don’t mean only that I have to know what happens. I mean that I have to hear the actual sentences. I have to know what atmosphere the words convey. 
  11. When I was still in prep school – 14, 15 – I started keeping notebooks, journals. I started writing, almost like landscape drawing or life drawing. I never kept a diary, I never wrote about my day and what happened to me, but I described things. 
  12. I am not attracted to writers by style. What style do Dickens, Grass, and Vonnegut have in common? How silly! I am attracted to what makes them angry, what makes them passionate, what outrages them, what they applaud and find sympathetic in human beings and what they detest about human beings, too. They are writers of great emotional range.
  13. You bet I write disaster fiction. We have compiled a disastrous record on this planet, a record of stupidity and absurdity and self-abuse and self-aggrandizement and self-deception and pompousness and self-righteousness and cruelty and indifference beyond what any other species has demonstrated the capacity for, which is the capacity for all the above.
  14. Along the (writing) way accidents happen, detours get taken… But these are not “divine” accidents; I don’t believe in those. I believe you have constructive accidents en route through a novel only because you have mapped a clear way. If you have confidence that you have a clear direction to take, you always have confidence to explore other ways; if they prove to be mere digressions, you’ll recognize that and make the necessary revisions. The more you know about a book, the freer you can be to fool around. The less you know, the tighter you get.

Tags: , , , ,

Elizabeth George (b. Feb 26): “I have to know the killer…”

26 Feb
george

pinterest.com/pin/39406565465739058/

Elizabeth George, born 26 February 1949, is an American author of mystery novels set in Great Britain. 11 of her novels have been adapted for television by the BBC as The Inspector Lynley Mysteries.

Quotes on writing:

  1. It is the job of the novelist to touch the reader.
  2. I wish that I’d known back then that a mastery of process would lead to a product. Then I probably wouldn’t have found it so frightening to write.
  3. I find it both fascinating and disconcerting when I discover yet another person who believes that writing can’t be taught. Frankly, I don’t understand this point of view.
  4. I have to know the killer, the victim and the motive when I begin. Then I start to create the characters and see how the novel takes shape based on what these people are like.
  5. Essentially and most simply put, plot is what the characters do to deal with the situation they’re in. It’s a logical sequence of events that grow from an initial incident that alters the status quo of the characters.
  6. Plotting is difficult for me, and always has been. I do that before I actually start writing, but I always do characters, and the arc of the story, first… You can’t do anything without a story arc. Where is it going to begin, where will it end.
  7. Lots of people want to have written; they don’t want to write. In other words, they want to see their name on the front cover of a book and their grinning picture on the back. But this is what comes at the end of a job, not at the beginning.

Tags: , , , ,

Lev Grossman: “A good story is a dirty secret…”

16 Jan

grossman

“A good story is a dirty secret that we all share. It’s what makes guilty pleasures so pleasurable, but it’s also what makes them so guilty. A juicy tale reeks of crass commercialism and cheap thrills. We crave such entertainments, but we despise them. Plot makes perverts of us all.”

~ LEV GROSSMAN

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