Frankisms

“Most writing focuses on the person who did the writing. What you want to do is focus on the interests of the person reading your words. — Joe Vitale”

writing

“My aim is to put down on paper what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way. — Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961)”

writing

“My life is way too boring to write from personal experience. — Cheryl St.John”

writing

“Never assume that because you’ve seen films in your genre you know it. This is like assuming you could compose a symphony because you have heard all nine of Beethoven’s — Robert McKee”

writing

“Never be afraid to dig into your character’s head and heart and pull up emotions and thoughts that are difficult to experience. — Cheryl St.John”

writing

“Never include anything the audience can reasonably and easily assume has happened. — Robert McKee”

writing

“No man can be called friendless when he has God and the companionship of good books. — Elizabeth Barrett Browning”

writing

“No matter how e-books may change the industry, some things are not going to change. Fiction writers will still have to write great novels. — Donald Maass”

writing

“No matter how obscure your time frame, at least a few of your readers are going to be well versed in it. — Persia Woolley”

writing

“No matter what era you’re researching, you most likely will find someone, somewhere has set up some kind of reenactment. — Persia Woolley”

writing

“No matter what you are writing, write to one person and you’ll create a sense of friendliness that can’t be beat. — Joe Vitale”

writing

“No matter what you write, you risk being misinterpreted, so why not take that as an excuse to take some real risks, by writing without inhibition, as if no one will read your work, knowing that you can polish it and pull back some of the glaring flaws later? — Jill Dearman”

writing

“No one really knows what good writing is—they only know what it “ain’t.” — Terry Burns”

writing

“No one will ever accuse you of writing a fast-paced novel. — Elizabeth George”

writing

“No single device more quickly improves a piece of writing than the practice of planting a naysayer in the text. — Gerald Graff”

writing

“No steel can pierce the human heart so chillingly as a period at the right moment. — Isaac Babel (1894–1941), Guy de Maupassant”

writing

“No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. — Robert Frost”

writing

“Nobody in Isaiah’s time had to go to a dictionary or a handbook to find out what he was talking about. — Eugene Peterson, Author of The Message”

writing

“Nothing tells us more about characters than how they deal with their troubles. — Jerry Cleaver”

writing

“Now that you know the rules, you may break them. But if you decide to break rules, know why, and do so intelligently. — Sandra Glahn, editor in chief of Kindred Spirit magazine”

writing

“Observing what makes a good story and what triggers reactions is a key part of learning how to create those triggers in your own writing. — Cheryl St.John”

writing

“On one side is the world as we believe it to be, on the other is reality as it actually is. In this gap is the nexus of story, the caldron that cooks our telling. Here the writer finds the most powerful, life-bending moments. — Robert McKee”

writing

“On your first pages, setting must be implied rather than described. — Cheryl St.John”

writing

“Once we have begun it, we continue reading a novel largely because we care about what happens to the characters. — Elizabeth George”

writing

“One good illustration is worth a thousand words. But one clear picture built up in the reader's mind by your words is worth a thousand drawings, for the reader colors that picture with his own imagination, which is more potent than all the brushes of all the world's artists. — Robert Collier”

writing

“One of the best ways to show emotion is to show it indirectly, to have a character deny the emotion when it is obvious to the reader that the emotion is there. — Ann Hood”

writing

“One of the secrets of publishing is to match your dress with your book cover. — Mary DeMuth”

writing

“One of the worst things about knowing a lot, or having access to a lot of information, is that we’re tempted to share it all. — Chip Heath”

writing

“One problem with delaying your start until the research is all done is that the research is never all done. — James Thom”

writing

“One way to practice focusing in is to choose something—anything—and write everything you can about it. — Susan K. Perry”

writing

“Only through the eyes and heart of a character does place come truly alive. — Donald Maass”

writing

“Originality is nothing but judicious imitation. The most original writers borrowed from one another. The instruction we find in books is like fire. We fetch it from our neighbors, kindle it at home, communicate it to others, and it becomes the property of all. — Voltaire”

writing

“Our best writing comes from pain. — DiAnn Mills”

writing

“Our characters are not us and therefore cannot always think and act and react the way we do. — Cheryl St.John”

writing

“Our tendency is to tell people the facts. First, though, they must realize that they need these facts. — Chip Heath”

writing

“Passionate involvement is why writers write—and readers turn pages. — DiAnn Mills”

writing

“Pay attention not just to words as words, but also to the feelings they mirror when people use them. — Dwight V. Swain”

writing

“People don’t change until the cost of staying the same gets too high. — Jeff Gerke”

writing

“People don’t pause in a crisis to analyze or reflect. They do, however, see details in oddly exaggerated focus, and those will seem larger than life. — Cheryl St.John”

writing

“People don’t read blog posts. They skim blog posts. — Thomas Umstattd”

writing