#craft

If grammar is the skeleton of expression and usage the flesh and blood, then style is the personality. ↗

— Arthur Plotnick

#grammar

It is the writer's job to craft a story so compelling that strangers will pay to hear it. ↗

— Seeley James

#job #writers #writing #writing-craft

Comparisons deplete the actuality of the things compared... ("Conveyance: The Story I would Not Want Bill Wilson To Read") ↗

— William S. Wilson

#writing #writing-craft #writing-craft

You cannot be a great writer in a shop where words are sold in tens and twenties. ↗

— Rick Aster

#writing-craft #writing-craft

I had declared in public my desire to be a writer ... I wanted to develop a curiosity that was oceanic and insatiable as well as a desire to learn and use every word in the English language that didn't sound pretentious or ditzy. ↗

— Pat Conroy

#writing-craft

For the past thirty years or so, much American poetry has been marked by an earnestness that rejects the comic. This has nothing to do with seriousness. The comic can be very serious. The trouble with the earnest is that it seeks to be commended. It seeks to be praised for its intention more than for what it is saying. ↗

— Stephen Dobyns

#writing-craft

Good fiction makes the truth believable. ↗

— Tarrant Smith

#writing-craft

A dear and long-time friend,... asked me, "Jack, how long does it usually take you to write a book?" I replied, "Of course it depends on the project and its requirements, each book has its own rules. But for a statement to the world at large, once I've thought a book through and written it in my mind, it takes me around a week or so, depending on this and that, ordinarily at the rate of a chapter a day, but I've had some two-chapters day and some chapters have taken two days. And then of course there is revision, but around a week is about right." He seemed surprised, and I was surprised by his surprise, so I thought, maybe I'm wrong. I went home and wrote this book, at the perfectly normal pace of a chapter a day, as usual... ↗

— Jacob Neusner

#writing-craft #writing-craft

Begin your writing, fiction or article, where the action begins. This action can be internal (e.g., an important insight or personal decision) or external (e.g., a murder or calamity). Begin too early, you lose your reader. Begin too late, you lose your story. ↗

— Walt Shiel

#writing-craft

Let us not neglect the forbidden. Let us not sophisticate ourselves out of the cheap thrill and chill of it: the story told for perversity's sake, and all the better for that; the image created because an artist gets tired of reasons sometimes, and wants to dredge up some picture he's been haunted by, and parade it like a new tattoo. I go with it, readily. ↗

— Clive Barker

#writing-advice #writing-craft #writing-craft