Writers on Writing

"I have given you a complete picture of Grace - the superficial things such as a spottily good vocabulary, with a naturalistic use of grammar; her clothes, her drinks etc. But I have also let you know she thinks and feels and yet at no time do I, the novelist, enter her mind. At no time am I the omniscient, ubiquitous novelist. The God. You read that book and you think you have been inside her thinking moments, but the fact is that nothing is told about Grace that could not have been actually seen or actually overheard by another human being."

John O'Hara writing to Frank Norris about his novel A Rage To Live

1. You must write.

2. You must finish what you start.

3. You must refrain from writing except to editorial order.

4. You must put it on the market.

5. You must keep it on the market util sold.

Robert Heinlein's five cardinal business habits from "On the Writing of Speculative Fiction" (1947)

"Get an idea. Start with action, somebody does something - a man reaches out a hand and opens a door, a light shines in his eyes, a body lies on the floor, he turns, looks up and down the hall ... Always action in detail. Make pictures. Like motion pictures. Always the scenes are visible. No stream of consciousness at all. We don't give a damn who's thinking what - only what they're doing. Always doing something. From one scene to another. Don't worry about it making sense. That's for the end."

Marcel Duhamel's instructions to Chester Himes

Any good story must have three essentials:

1. Character and setting

2. Conflict

3. Resolution

Robert McCrum

the only art is to omit

Robert Louis Stevenson

Don't write what you know; what you know is boring. Write what you DON'T know.

Ken Kesey

Those who write clearly have readers; those who write obscurely have commentators

Albert Camus

This page was last amended 3 October 2002