A short story is the ultimate close-up magic trick -- a couple of thousand words to take you around the universe or break your heart.
Neil GaimanRead
Because, if one is writing novels today, concentrating on the beauty of the prose is right up there with concentrating on your semi-colons, for wasted effort.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Focusing on the aesthetics of writing can be as futile as obsessing over punctuation in modern novels.
Neil Gaiman highlights the importance of substance over style in writing novels. He suggests that today's readers prioritize the narrative and emotional impact of a story over the technical beauty of prose or meticulous punctuation, implying that writers should focus on what truly matters to engage their audience.
Themes
WritingNovelsProseBeautyNarrativeEmotional Impact
In practice
Example use cases
This quote could be used in a creative writing class to emphasize the importance of storytelling over technical details.
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As a teenager I wrote to R.A. Lafferty. And he responded, too, with letters that were like R.A. Lafferty short stories, filled with elliptical answers to straight questions and simple answers to complicated ones.
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Nothing’s changed. You’ll go home. You’ll be bored. You’ll be ignored. No one will listen to you, really listen to you. You’re too clever and too quiet for them to understand. They don’t even get your name right.
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I like the stars. It's the illusion of permanence, I think. I mean, they're always flaring up and caving in and going out. But from here, I can pretend...I can pretend that things last. I can pretend that lives last longer than moments. Gods come, and gods go. Mortals flicker and flash and fade. Worlds don't last; and stars and galaxies are transient, fleeting things that twinkle like fireflies and vanish into cold and dust. But I can pretend.
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