Quotes About Story

The thing is, emotion - if it's visibly felt by the writer - will go through all the processes it takes to publish a story and still hit the reader right in the gut. But you have to really mean it.

Early on, a story's meaning and rationale seem pretty obvious, but then, as I write it, I realize that I know the meaning/rationale too well, which means that the reader will also know it - and so things have to be ramped up.

Not to make him blush, but any story illustrated by Mike Mignola does things that prose alone can't accomplish. The illustrations create mood and atmosphere, drawing the reader more deeply into the story than words could do on their own.

I'm so focused on trying to craft the story that I'm in my own little world with it and that process. The one reader I'm trying to please as I write is me, and I'm pretty difficult to please.

History is my passion. So I write what I love to read. I find that if I combine history with a strong, sensual romance, it is like a one-two punch. The reader doesn't want the history without the romance, and of course the heavier the history, the more it has to be leavened with a sensual, all-consuming love story.

I think a writer's first job is to entertain, even in novels: to tell a compelling story that pulls the reader along toward an end. At the same time, the best stories are character-driven.

I was really the first-line editor of the 'House of Night' series. I didn't write that much of the story, and I didn't know what was happening until my mom finished the book and sent it to me because I wanted to read it with fresh eyes as a general reader would.

Comics are not theatre - there's a very important difference in that the reader controls the page. You can linger on a page of comics as long as you want. You can read and go forward and then move back; you can reread, in one sitting or at your leisure. You can take as much time as you want to take in that story.

Your opening should give the reader a person to focus on. In a short story, this person should turn up almost immediately; he should be integral to the story's main action; he should be an individual, not just a type. In a novel, the main character may take longer to appear: Anna Karenina doesn't show up in her own novel until chapter eighteen.

The reader is going to imprint on the characters he sees first. He is going to expect to see these people often, to have them figure largely into the story, possibly to care about them. Usually, this will be the protagonist.

Every story makes a promise to the reader. Actually, two promises, one emotional and one intellectual, since the function of stories is to make us both feel and think.

Only a reader can become a writer. Develop a lively intellect and the ability to become interested in anything, no matter how mundane it might seem at first. Look for the story. Develop an eye for detail. Feed your mind and your brain: learn as much as you can about everything you can.

However much, as readers, we lose ourselves in a novel or story, fiction itself is an experience on the order of memory -not on the order of actual occurrence.

People who were more concerned with themselves and looking good to their readers then they were with the characters sacrificed a series for the sake of a story.

I do have to earn a living, so I'm conscious of probable reactions from readers, but the most important one is still the awareness that if I'm not enjoying a story, the reader won't either.

I think people enjoy a series. When you like a story, many readers want more of the same, which is dandy, if the author and the characters have more to say.

In terms of the secrets that imbue and underlie 'Fall on Your Knees', they were as much of a mystery to me as I was creating the story as they are to the readers.

Remember, if you don't feel passionate about the characters and subject of your story, your readers won't either.

Point-of-view is a matter that readers rarely pay attention to, yet it's one of the most important story decisions an author makes.

I'd like to set a story in Australia, but I would need to feel confident my German and U.S. readers, for example, would stay with me.

Most detective story readers are an educated audience and know there are only a certain number of plots. The interest lies in what the writer does with them.

As a writer, I always try as hard as possible to get out of the way of the story, so maybe that's the most important thing my readers should know - I'm all about the story, not about the ego.

I remember reading 'The Running Man' in like one night.

Both 'Where'd You Go, Bernadette' and my first novel, 'This One is Mine,' are pretty complex on a story level, and fun reads as a result.