There is no rule on how to write. Sometimes it comes easily and perfectly; sometimes it’s like drilling rock and then blasting it out with charges.
Source: martinaboone
Source: amandaonwriting
Screenwriting Tip #970
At the simplest level, antagonists are just characters who force your protagonist to make choices. If your antagonists aren’t doing that, they aren’t doing their job.
Source: screenwritingtips
You don’t write because you want to say something, you write because you have something to say.
Source: boxofoctaves
There are many reasons why novelists write - but they all have one thing in common: a need to create an alternative world.
(via libraryland)
Source: quoteworld
The cat sat on the mat is not a story. The cat sat on the other cat’s mat is a story.
Source: amandaonwriting
1. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
2. Never use a long word where a short one will do.
3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
4. Never use the passive where you can use the active.
5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
6. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.
Source: explore-blog
Writing is a consequence of having been ‘haunted’ by material. Why this is, no one knows.
(via wordreign)
Source: libraryland
You simply keep putting down one damn word after the other, as they come to you. You can either set brick as a laborer or as an artist. You can make the work a chore, or you can have a good time. You can do it the way you used to clear the dinner dishes when you were thirteen, or you can do it as a Japanese person would perform a tea ceremony, with a level of concentration and care in which you can lose yourself, and so in which you can find yourself.
(via teachingliteracy)
Source: paperbackgirl
Dear Sir:
I like words. I like fat buttery words, such as ooze, turpitude, glutinous, toady. I like solemn, angular, creaky words, such as straitlaced, cantankerous, pecunious, valedictory. I like spurious, black-is-white words, such as mortician, liquidate, tonsorial, demi-monde. I like suave “V” words, such as Svengali, svelte, bravura, verve. I like crunchy, brittle, crackly words, such as splinter, grapple, jostle, crusty. I like sullen, crabbed, scowling words, such as skulk, glower, scabby, churl. I like Oh-Heavens, my-gracious, land’s-sake words, such as tricksy, tucker, genteel, horrid. I like elegant, flowery words, such as estivate, peregrinate, elysium, halcyon. I like wormy, squirmy, mealy words, such as crawl, blubber, squeal, drip. I like sniggly, chuckling words, such as cowlick, gurgle, bubble and burp.
I like the word screenwriter better than copywriter, so I decided to quit my job in a New York advertising agency and try my luck in Hollywood, but before taking the plunge I went to Europe for a year of study, contemplation and horsing around.
I have just returned and I still like words.
May I have a few with you?
Robert Pirosh
385 Madison Avenue
Room 610
New York
Eldorado 5-6024
My new favorite job application letter, from 1934. He ended up winning an Oscar for screenwriting!
(via Letters of Note)
We like words too.
(via good)
(via good)
Source: megangreenwell
I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see, and what it means. What I want and what I fear.
(via comfortablymyself)
Source: dyinginthemoonlight
Reading usually precedes writing and the impulse to write is almost always fired by reading. Reading, the love of reading, is what makes you dream of becoming a writer.
(via teachingliteracy)
Source: amandaonwriting
Writing and being successful at it is not about being the next Ernest Hemingway. It’s about having a voice, and presenting it with passion in a way that inspires. It’s about being honest, raw, and real.
(via ilovereadingandwriting)
Source: goinswriter.com
birdartpoetry asked: Mister Gaiman, you’re kickass. I was just wondering, what do you think is the best way to seduce a writer? I figured your answer would be pretty spectacular.
neil-gaiman: In my experience, writers tend to be really good at the inside of their own heads and imaginary people, and a lot less good at the stuff going on outside, which means that quite often if you flirt with us we will completely fail to notice, leaving everybody involved slightly uncomfortable and more than slightly unlaid.
So I would suggest that any attempted seduction of a writer would probably go a great deal easier for all parties if you sent them a cheerful note saying “YOU ARE INVITED TO A SEDUCTION: Please come to dinner on Friday Night. Wear the kind of clothes you would like to be seduced in.”
And alcohol may help, too. Or kissing. Many writers figure out that they’re being seduced or flirted with if someone is actually kissing them.
