Quotes About Writing

The movies that work are the ones in which somebody very smart figured out how to take all the thematic material, all the character material, all the filigree, all the beautiful writing, and put it into a story.

I never start out with any kind of connecting theme or plan. Everything just falls the way it falls. I don't ever think about what kind of fiction I write or what I am writing about or what I am trying to write about. When I'm writing, what I do is I think about a story that I want to tell.

In a story, you have to have a theme and an angle, you have to have a beginning, middle and an end. You have to have a defining moment and kick it to death. You gotta be able to recognize that, by the way. It probably takes experience.

I do not think writers ought ever to sit down and think they must write about some cause, or theme, or something. If they write about their own experiences, something true is going to emerge.

I've never sat down and thought about the difference between plot and theme. To me, that's never been important.

Every story I write starts with a dilemma or a theme. Once I am convinced that this is the issue that is perturbing my thoughts, I start to look for characters capable of representing it.

I really like writing for specific projects. It's a whole different way of writing when you have certain guidelines and a theme you're writing to. It's very inspiring.

I never try to convey a message, I just want to tell a story. Why that story in particular? I have no idea, but I have learned to surrender to the muse. I become obsessed with a theme or with certain stories; they haunt me for years, and finally, I write them.

Theme is great for people who like to approach stories that way, but it's an organizing principle that helps us write a story that has some weight; it's not something that all readers have to care about.

I think any writer keeps going back to some basic theme. Sometimes it's autobiographical. I guess it usually is.

One theme I ran into over and over while writing about the periodic table was the future of energy and the question of which element or elements will replace carbon as king.

As long as there's a strong theme that I can identify with, that's what makes me interested in writing.

I have been writing poetry ever since I was in high school. My poetry mainly concerned the theme of love. And that, of course, is an endless subject.

I'm not that sort of writer where I can restrict myself to a theme, just in case nothing good comes of it.

After I quit being a lawyer in '95, I was having a lot of trouble writing. Then I read somewhere that Willa Cather read a chapter of the Bible every day before she started work. I thought, 'Okay, I'll try it.' Before each writing session, I started to read the Bible like a writer, thinking about language, character, and themes.

I taught for a while after college, writing at night and on weekends and vacations. But I might be done writing.

This book has been like a monkey on my back for over a year. I can't separate it from losing my mother so I have to finish it and send it away. And until I can get my writing back, a part of me is missing.

She worked as hard as possible but still was doing more rewriting than writing. She had wanted to have thirty pages after three days but she had nine.

troubles aren't worth the paper they're written on, but that doesn't mean writing them down won't help you get a fix on 'em.

I just don't see myself as a travel writer. I can't. I don't.

Whenever you write, whatever you write, never make the mistake of assuming the audience is any less intelligent than you are.

In eleven or twelve years of writing, Mike, I can lay claim to at least this: I have never written beneath myself. I have never written anything that I didn't want my name attached to. I have probed deeper in some scripts and I've been more successful in some than others. But all of them that have been on, you know, I'll take my lick. They're mine and that's the way I wanted them.

My favorite. "Every writer is a frustrated actor who recites his lines in the hidden auditorium of his skull." ? Rod Serling

When I started writing full time I had not long stopped being a teacher and when at last I had a full day to write, I would put music on and wonder to myself - am I allowed to do this? Then I thought: 'I am control of this and no one is telling me what I can do.'