Stein on Writing Quotes

“If all but one of the instruments on a surgeon’s tray had been sterilized, that exception would be a danger to the patient. It can be said that one slip of point of view by a writer can hurt a story badly, and several slips can be fatal.”
― Sol Stein, Stein on Writing

“There is a tendency among people within a profession to use or create words whose meanings are clear only to others within their narrow group and obscure to the rest of the world. This tendency in all specializations is a barrier to communication and a support of self-serving secrecy in an “in” group. Writers have an obligation to defend their language against the assaults of jargon.”
― Sol Stein, Stein on Writing

“Dialogue is a lean language in which every word counts.”
― Sol Stein, Stein on Writing

“Dialogue, contrary to popular view, is not a recording of actual speech; it is a semblance of speech, an invented language of exchanges that build in tempo or content toward climaxes.”
― Sol Stein, Stein on Writing

“Suspense builds when the reader wants something to happen and it isn’t happening yet. Or something is happening and the reader wants it to stop, now. And it doesn’t.”
― Sol Stein, Stein on Writing

“You take your reader to the cliff’s edge. There you hang your hero by his fingertips. You are not to behave like a compassionate human being. You are not a rescuer. Your job is to avoid rescuing the hero as long as possible. You leave him hanging.”
― Sol Stein, Stein on Writing

“Suspense is strong glue between the reader and the writing.”
― Sol Stein, Stein on Writing

“A writer has to squelch his emotional reactions consciously in order to get enough distance to use them in his work as a writer.”
― Sol Stein, Stein on Writing

“The fact that acute differences exist between social and cultural classes seems to be acknowledged in most of the world, but in the United States, where democracy is often confounded with egalitarianism, even the idea that social classes exist has long been taboo. It is, however, a writer’s specialty to deal with taboos, to speak the unspoken, to reveal, to uncover, to show in the interaction of people the difference between what we profess and how we act. Moreover, because touchy subjects arouse emotion, they are especially useful for the writer who knows that arousing the emotions of his audience is the test of his skill.”
― Sol Stein, Stein on Writing

“A writer cannot be a Pollyanna. He is in the business of writing what other people think but don’t say”
― Sol Stein, Stein on Writing

“People who are exactly like other people probably don’t exist. But people who seem like most other people litter our lives, and we don’t usually seek their company because they are boring. Readers don’t read novels in order to experience the boredom they often experience in life. They want to meet interesting people, extraordinary people, preferably people different from anyone they’ve met before in or out of fiction.”
― Sol Stein, Stein on Writing

“If readers could talk back to writers (they sometimes do by not reading their work) they might say, “Would you knowingly go to a physician who was weak in his craft? Would you attend a badly conducted concert just because it was available? Would you bring your car for a tune-up to a mechanic who thought fine-tuning was a waste of his time?” The reader trusts the writer to do his best. If he does his second-best, he shouldn’t be surprised if his reader finds another writer to read.”
― Sol Stein, Stein on Writing

“A novel is like a car—it won’t go anywhere until you turn on the engine. The “engine” of both fiction and nonfiction is the point at which the reader makes the decision not to put the book down. The engine should start in the first three pages, the closer to the top of page one the better.”
― Sol Stein, Stein on Writing

“So many writers fight an uphill battle trying to interest their readers in matters that have no inherent conflict.”
― Sol Stein, Stein on Writing

“Others find excuses for not writing at the same time every day, balk at re-revising incessantly, or excuse themselves because their lives are beset by difficulties. I am deaf to that excuse because I worked with the most disadvantaged writer in history, Christy Brown, who had the use of his brain, the little toe on his left foot, and little else. When he was a seemingly helpless baby lying on the kitchen floor of a cottage in Ireland, his remarkable mother saw him reach out with his left foot and with his one good toe manage to pick up a crayon that one of his siblings had dropped. That was the beginning of a writer. Eventually someone at IBM made a special typewriter for Christy that enabled him to punch in a letter at a time with his one working toe. I published five of Christy Brown’s books, one of which made the national bestseller lists.”
― Sol Stein, Stein on Writing

“The best of good writing will entice us into subjects and knowledge we would have declared were of no interest to us until we were seduced by the language they were dressed in.”
― Sol Stein, Stein on Writing

“All of us, in our daily speech to others, are not only trying to communicate information but to get something off our minds and into the consciousness of the listeners. When we write, we put down on paper what we think, know, or believe we know and pay little attention to the effect on the reader. That is discourteous in life and unsuccessful in writing. We practice our craft to service the reader, not our psyches.”
― Sol Stein, Stein on Writing

“The century I have inhabited has not seen the abandonment of war and violence. It has not solved the problem of poverty, nor has it improved human nature. However, we can credit the century with producing the public realization that sex has to be good for both partners. That is also the key to writing both fiction and nonfiction. It has to be a good experience for both partners, the writer and the reader, and it is a source of distress to me to observe how frequently writers ignore the pleasure of their partners.”
― Sol Stein, Stein on Writing

“Look how you're dressed. Your suit is blue, your shirt is blue, your tie is blue. That's what's wrong with your writing.”
― Sol Stein, Stein on Writing

“Diction involves the choice of words for their precise meaning and sound, the arrangement of those words, and their selection for effect.”
― Sol Stein, Stein On Writing: A Master Editor of Some of the Most Successful Writers of Our Century Shares His Craft Techniques and Strategies

“All of these early exposures to offstage happenings contribute to the belief that stories are told. They can be a liability to writers later in life because the writer has to change his mind-set from telling what happened somewhere else to creating an experience for the reader by showing what happened. Twentieth”
― Sol Stein, Stein On Writing: A Master Editor of Some of the Most Successful Writers of Our Century Shares His Craft Techniques and Strategies

“Those are the three keys: the want and the opposition to the want need to be important, necessary, and urgent. The result should be the kind of conflict that interests readers.”
― Sol Stein, Stein On Writing: A Master Editor of Some of the Most Successful Writers of Our Century Shares His Craft Techniques and Strategies

“Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader, not the fact that it’s raining, but the feeling of being rained upon.” The”
― Sol Stein, Stein On Writing: A Master Editor of Some of the Most Successful Writers of Our Century Shares His Craft Techniques and Strategies

“Arousal is nature’s stimulus for the propagation of the human race. The unaroused male of the species is as useless for that purpose as a worm. Arousal can happen sooner or later, but it must happen.”
― Sol Stein, Stein On Writing: A Master Editor of Some of the Most Successful Writers of Our Century Shares His Craft Techniques and Strategies