I thought I'd share a great article from K.M. Weiland over at helpingwritersbecomeauthors.com.
20 of the Most Instructive Quotes About Writing
I’ve been really into writing quotes lately. Many of the posts I write are inspired by great things I read from other authors, so I decided to go on a hunt through my archives and find twenty of my favorite instructive quotes about writing.
There’s so much wisdom to be found in our fellow writers. And because writers are, well, writers, their wisdom is usually framed in incredibly beautiful and eloquent terms.
I hope you enjoy these insights from twenty great minds, covering everything from the specifics of the craft to the challenges of the lifestyle to the power of the calling.
1. Writing When Life Is Busy
I have four kids and my life is very demanding, loud, messy and chaotic. I had to get into these spaces mentally where I was creating and visualizing scenes while cutting vegetables, driving in a car pool or waiting for somebody’s soccer practice to be finished. If I found myself thinking about things that were not really important, I would stop myself and envision a scene.—Julianna Baggott
2. Telling the Truth
The thing that I absolutely live by is you have to tell the truth. I know that sounds very simplistic. But I think that … if you’re enjoying yourself too much and if you’re intruding too much on a character or the voice of a character, [or] if you find that you’re stepping back from that character and that situation and you’re commenting on it–you’re not doing your job. You need to be as true and as empathic to that moment as possible. You can’t be at a remove.—David Margulies
3. Punctuating
I tell my students: If you are a writer, you have more power than the greatest tyrant in the world because of punctuation. You get to tell people how to breathe.—Alicia Anstead
4. Writing Surprising Prose
…think about language by its degree of strangeness…. [I] don’t want the sentences to feel entirely familiar, either. If I find myself describing a character’s eyes, for example, I’m probably going to try to avoid verbs like “glint,” or “sparkle” because those are verbs a reader has seen paired beside “eyes” many times before—maybe so many times that they have lost some of their original power.—Anthony Doerr
5. Creating Dimensional Characters
Dimension means contradiction: either within deep character (guilt-ridden ambition) or between characterization and deep character (a charming thief). These contradictions must be consistent. It doesn’t add dimension to portray a guy as nice throughout a film, then in one scene have him kick a cat.—Robert McKee
See what I mean? Pretty great, right? There's 15 more where that came from. Click here to read on.
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