Novels are nothing but evolution, but there does come a point when that stops, and the story is sealed within the pages of the book. That doesn't happen with a play. Even performances are different every night.
I want to make books. I want to take pictures and then write all over the pictures. And then I don't have to say a complete story, because I have the picture, and I have just a word.
Nobody's favorite movie is some dark, dysfunctional slasher story. Everybody's favorite song is a sentimental song. So why all of a sudden is it bad to be sentimental in books?
The brilliance of Max Brooks is that he always quotes authorities at the back of his books that never existed. Like a Russian professor he made up that validates a story or character.
A good story or a book is all about it's power to hold it's readers still till the very last word of it's climax - complexity in language, dialogues, descriptions, everything else is secondary!
I haven't thought about writing so much as potentially producing and finding my own projects to get into production. I want to be able to buy the rights to a story that I have read or a book that I have read.
To Fred, those years seemed to pass like quickly skimming a book and then finding the ending wasn't what he expected. He wished he'd paid more attention to the story.
The more I know about God, I am convinced He likes to read books and authors are His librarians. Every soul is a story waiting to be read.
I've always been a little bit more of a novel reader than a short story reader. I think the first books that made me want to be a writer were novels.
The first author I remember being obsessed by, actually realizing 'I like the way he writes and I like the way he tells stories,' was C.S. Lewis and the 'Narnia' books.
Plot is not my forte. It's like I have to live in my head in the book for a while before I figure out what the story is... My process is a bit messier.
I lay on the bed and lost myself in stories. I liked that. Books were safer than other people anyway.
Creation stories, so central in the religions of the Middle East, play a surprisingly marginal part in Greek myth. The Greeks had nothing to set alongside the resounding 'In the beginning' in the book of Genesis, where one eternal God creates the uni...
I was a semiotics major at Brown, and there's this idea that stories are better, books are better, and movies are better if they cocked you off your axis and you were completely disoriented and you'd really have to rethink everything. Nobody has that...
If you're having trouble finishing a book, it might be that you're trying to fix it as you go. Just finish the story, no matter how terrible you think that first draft is. Then let it cool off. In other words, don't look at it for a while. Then you c...
'Dandelion Wine' became one of the few books that I returned to time and again, and while not anywhere near the story crafter as Mr. Bradbury, I hope I managed to absorb by osmosis some of his techniques.
I considered that I had to write stories about the people I had met, with whom I'd worked, the history of my books - just in case I up and die.
I never feel lonely if I've got a book - they're like old friends. Even if you're not reading them over and over again, you know they are there. And they're part of your history. They sort of tell a story about your journey through life.
'Big Sky Mountain' is the story of Hutch Carmody and Kendra Shepherd, lovers with a history, and a lot of hurt pride. The book is about finding their way back to each other, growing as people, and inventing a life they can share.
I devour history books. I love anything by Thomas B. Costain or George MacDonald Fraser. He writes magnificent history, and he also wrote the Flashman stories, which are irresistible.
If a secret history of books could be written, and the author's private thoughts and meanings noted down alongside of his story, how many insipid volumes would become interesting, and dull tales excite the reader!
