Quotes on Story Writing

People on the outside think there's something magical about writing, that you go up in the attic at midnight and cast the bones and come down in the morning with a story, but it isn't like that. You sit in back of the typewriter and you work, and that's all there is to it.

The object of fiction isn't grammatical correctness but to make the reader welcome and then tell a story.... Writing is seduction. Good talk is part of seduction.

Anecdotes don't make good stories. Generally I dig down underneath them so far that the story that finally comes out is not what people thought their anecdotes were about.

Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere.

I'll give you the whole secret to short story writing. Here it is. Rule 1: Write stories that please yourself. There is no Rule 2.

I don't care if a reader hates one of my stories, just as long as he finishes the book.

When your story is ready for rewrite, cut it to the bone. Get rid of every ounce of excess fat. This is going to hurt; revising a story down to the bare essentials is always a little like murdering children, but it must be done.

After nourishment, shelter and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world.

Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.

I love writing. I love the swirl and swing of words as they tangle with human emotions.

If there is a magic in story writing, and I am convinced that there is, no one has ever been able to reduce it to a recipe that can be passed from one person to another. The formula seems to lie solely in the aching urge of the writer to convey something he feels important to the reader. If the writer has that urge, he may sometimes but by no means always find the way to do it.

Find the key emotion; this may be all you need know to find your short story.

You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.

No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader.

Everybody walks past a thousand story ideas every day. The good writers are the ones who see five or six of them. Most people don't see any.

If you write one story, it may be bad; if you write a hundred, you have the odds in your favor.

If there is a magic in story writing, and I am convinced there is, no one has ever been able to reduce it to a recipe that can be passed from one person to another.

History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.

All the words I use in my stories can be found in the dictionary-it's just a matter of arranging them into the right sentences.

If you can tell stories, create characters, devise incidents, and have sincerity and passion, it doesn't matter a damn how you write.

I knew nothing about the technique of story writing, and now, after eighteen years of writing, I still know nothing about the technique, although with the publication of my new novel, Tarzan and the Lost Empire, there are 31 books on my list.