I see manuscripts and books that are spoiled for the literary reader because they are one long stream of top-of-the-head writing, a writer telling a …

- Sol Stein

A reader's emotions can be sparked with few words. That's the power of dialogue.

- Sol Stein

Our instinct as human beings is to provide answers, to ease tension. As writers our job is the opposite, to create tension and not dispel it immediat…

- Sol Stein

Most of the time, tough, combative, adversarial dialogue is much more exciting than physical action.

- Sol Stein

To create tension, dialogue needs to be stretched out. That is, characters should not be immediately responsive.

- Sol Stein

The expert magician seeks to deceive the mind, rather than the eye.

- Sol Stein

A lawyer's job is to manipulate the skeletons in other people's closets.

- Sol Stein

Readers take in dialogue one thought at a time. A frequent mistake of beginners is to combine thoughts, which may be suitable for other forms of writ…

- Sol Stein

Dialogue is a lean language in which every word counts.

- Sol Stein