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

6. Finding the Human Story

There are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they never happened.—Willa Cather

7. Separating Theme From Message

Theme is also not the same as message. A message, by my definition, is a political statement. It is a principle that concerns people in a particular situation and is not universally applicable to any member of the audience.—Michael Hauge

8. Separating Verisimilitude From Reality

Is realism what people read novels for? No. A novel must have verisimilitude, that is, the appearance of reality, within the context of the world created by the book. But realism?—William Bernhardt

9. Reading

Never trust anyone who has not brought a book with them.—Lemony Snicket

10. Balancing Humility and Confidence

Writers have to simultaneously believe the following two things:

The story I am now working on is the greatest work of genius ever written in English.

The story I am now working on is worthless drivel.—Orson Scott Card

11. Writing to Reveal Not Conceal

…words are a means to reveal, not something to hide behind. One of the great mistakes of writing is to think of it as a way to impress people in order to escape or obscure our own personal shortcomings.—David Corbett

12. Writing From the Subconscious

It took time to learn that the hard thing about writing is to let the story write itself, while one sits at the typewriter and does as little thinking as possible. It happened over and over again, and the beginner learned—when you start puzzling over an idea, and slowing down on the keys, the writing gets worse and worse.—Richard Bach

13. Foreshadowing

When you insert a hint of what’s to come, look at it critically and decide whether it’s something the reader will glide right by but remember later with an Aha! That’s foreshadowing. If instead the reader groans and guesses what’s coming, you’ve telegraphed.—Hallie Ephron

14. Filling the Well

[When] your story no longer stimulates you, excites you…. There can be all sorts of reasons. But one of the most common is that you’ve drawn too much from the well without refilling. The well, of course, is your own head. Your brain. Your consciousness. Your imagination. You’ve drained it of things that interest and intrigue you. Or, to put it another way, you’ve used the same story elements too often: the same ideas, the same settings, the same twists and compilations, the same characters.—Dwight V. Swain

15. Writing Even When You Don’t Feel Like It

Before I began to write tonight, I experienced an almost overwhelming loathing for my project. It took sheer will to throw me into that “once upon a time.” I think one main drawback is that I never think it’s going to be good enough, but ours is only the trying & you forsake your vision at the peril of your soul.—Gail Godwin

16. Co-Writing With the Reader

…the book doesn’t only belong to the writer, it belongs to the reader as well, and then together you make it what it is.—Paul Auster

17. Preparing the Ending

Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.—Kurt Vonnegut

18. Surpassing Talent

Talent, I have long told my students, is the assumptions we make about other people’s abilities that keep us from developing our own.—Barbara Baig

19. Writing Like No One Is Looking

…write without looking over [your] shoulder. Write it as if no one is going to read it. That’s what frees you. If you can stop thinking about critics, and your editor, and whether your book’s going to make it into the Times, and how long it is going to be on the list, I mean, that can totally free you up.—Terry McMillan

20. Writing to Fill the Hole in Your Heart

…I write to fill the hole in my heart. At any given time, all of us have an empty spot, one that is calling for companionship, for example, or for justice, love, romance, or a belly laugh. When I sit down to write, I look to see what hole needs filling at that particular moment. Sometimes that can be painful—but it can’t be ignored. Flat or uninteresting writing often signals something deeper that is being covered up.—Kathi Appelt

Wordplayers, tell me your opinions! What are you favorite quotes about writing? Tell me in the comments!

[Podcast Update: The podcast should be back next Monday! Yay! I’m finally all but over my five-week cold. Thanks for your patience this past month!]

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