Quotes About Creativity

The idea that I'm going to have to sit down to write some fiction where I'm going to have to think of a plot would really scare me, because it would come out a mess.

Plot is not my forte. It's like I have to live in my head in the book for a while before I figure out what the story is... My process is a bit messier.

Normally I start with a plot, and write a synopsis, and the ideas come from the construction.

It's one of the most liberating things I experience in writing - letting yourself get rid of a gesture or character or plot point that always nagged, even if you couldn't admit to yourself that it did.

It's hard to write a good plot, it's very hard.

I always think plot is what you fall back on if you can't write, to keep things going.

In writing, I'm totally anti-plans of any kind. All my attempts to plan and plot novels have come to grief, and in expensive ways.

I never make a note of anything; I never even write a plot down.

You need to know the characters as living, breathing people before you start the plot; otherwise, you'll feel panic, anarchy and chaos.

Sometimes, like in 'Invisible Monsters,' I get too out of control, and instead of a plot point every chapter, I want a plot point in every sentence.

I never make notes; just a few small details when I'm writing, but nothing much. The plot is never written down. I will tell the story to myself, but I won't plan it. I'll speak the narrative in my head for a while.

I eat broccoli. I think about the plot. I pace in circles for hours, counter-clockwise, listening to music. I try to think of one detail in the scene I'm about to write that I'm really excited about writing. Until I can come up with that one detail, I pace.

There is no 'right' way to begin a novel, but for me, plot has to wait. The character comes first.

Sometimes, by using the most over-the-top, ridiculous plot device you can imagine, you get some interesting little conflicts and cool things that you might not otherwise have a chance to explore.

Certain writers look down their noses at plot, and I think I might have been one of them until I tried it.

The great thing about a parallel-dimensions story is that you can literally never run out of plot.

I really don't care about plot. I really, really don't.

You don't idea your way into a plot but plot your way into an idea.

What I have to outline is action and plot because I'm not particularly good at that.

Bohemia isn't somewhere an artist runs to escape society. It's a place where like-minded artists gather to plot the downfall of dogma and ignorance.

I don't know how to write a novel in the world of cellphones. I don't know how to write a novel in the world of Google, in which all factual information is available to all characters. So I have to stand on my head to contrive a plot in which the characters lose their cellphone and are separated from technology.

I tried writing out a plot with the second or third novel I wrote, and it was so boring, so desperately boring.

I don't give plots to Harold Robbins or Graham Greene, because they don't need them, but a lot of authors do.

I love all of it, thinking up the plots, getting to know the kids in the story, their parents, backyards, pizza toppings.