The idea is to avoid monotony.
– Lester Dent
Tag: idea
Quotable 403
When I start I am in a total limbo. I don’t have any idea where the story is going or what is going to happen.
– Isabel Allende
Quotable 395
The purpose of fiction is to affect rather than to convince the reader. Its object is to reach him through his senses rather than through his mind. The purpose of argumentation is to convince; the purpose of description is to present a picture; the purpose of exposition is to impart knowledge, ideas, facts: but the characteristic purpose of narrative in the fictional sense in which we are taking it here is to make the reader feel.
– Thomas H. Uzzell
Quotable 357
Slowly, slowly, I accumulate sentences. I have no idea what I’m doing until suddenly it reveals itself, almost done.
– Sarah Manguso
Quotable 303
Men love women. It’s not an original idea. But
if you somehow write a terrific novel about it, then by a literary
sleight of hand it becomes absolutely original.
– Umberto Eco
Quotable 234
I always start out with an idea, even a boring idea, that becomes a question I don’t have answers to.
– Toni Morrison
Quotable 216
If you don’t understand that story is character and not just idea, you will not be able to breathe life into even the most intriguing flash of inspiration.
– Elizabeth George
Quotable 189
I never started from ideas but always from character.
– Ivan Turgenev
Quotable 164
I get a sentence, an idea, an image, and I start. I don’t know anything beyond it. I follow it.
– David Rabe
Quotable 37
If you haven’t got an idea, start a story anyway. You can always throw it away, and maybe by the time you get to the fourth page you will have an idea, and you’ll only have to throw away the first three pages.
– William Campbell Gault