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" Conflict drives fiction; no one wants to read a four-hundred-page novel in which everything rolls along smoothly. "
Nancy Kress
Conflict
Fiction
Everything
Related Quotes:
" Every drama requires a cast. The cast may be so huge, as in Leo Tolstoy's 'Anna Karenina,' that the author or editor provides a list of characters to keep them straight. Or it may be an intimate cast of two. "
Nancy Kress
Two
Cast
Drama
" The process, not the results, have to be the reason a writer writes. Otherwise, creating a four-hundred-page novel is just too daunting a task. "
Nancy Kress
Reason
Task
Results
" If you're writing a thriller, mystery, Western or adventure-driven book, you'd better keep things moving rapidly for the reader. Quick pacing is vital in certain genres. It hooks readers, creates tension, deepens the drama, and speeds things along. "
Nancy Kress
Moving
Mystery
Writing
" A true epilogue is removed from the story in time or space. That's the reason it is called an 'Epilogue'; the label serves to alert the reader that the story itself is over, but we are going to now see a distant result or consequence of that story. "
Nancy Kress
Space
Result
True
" If you consistently write 'The sun set' rather than 'The sun sank slowly in the bright western sky,' your story will move three times as fast. Of course, there are times you want the longer version for atmosphere - but not many. Wordiness not only kills pace; it bores readers. "
Nancy Kress
Fast
Three
You
" Your opening should give the reader a person to focus on. In a short story, this person should turn up almost immediately; he should be integral to the story's main action; he should be an individual, not just a type. In a novel, the main character may take longer to appear: Anna Karenina doesn't show up in her own novel until chapter eighteen. "
Nancy Kress
Action
Short
Story
" You do not have to dramatize everything. In fact, you usually can't, not without ending up with a half-million-word novel. "
Nancy Kress
Without
Ending
You
" Exposition has legitimate uses. It's the most efficient way to summarize background information, including necessary information about a character's history. It can set the stage well for a major dramatized event. "
Nancy Kress
Way
Character
History
" When a story is flying along, and I'm so into it that my 'real' world goes away, it can feel magical. I cease to be, my desk and computer ceases to be, and I am my character in his world. Psychologists call this a 'flow state,' and it's better than publication, money, awards, fame. "
Nancy Kress
I Am
Money
World
" The truth is, you have about three paragraphs in a short story, three pages in a novel, to capture that editor's attention enough for her to finish your story. "
Nancy Kress
Story
You
Truth Is
" Questions that require answers are what keep readers going - and the place to start raising those questions is with your very first sentence. "
Nancy Kress
Start
Questions
Place
" Readers want to see, hear, feel, smell the action of your story, even if that action is just two people having a quiet conversation. "
Nancy Kress
See
Action
Conversation
" Without coffee, nothing gets written. Period. "
Nancy Kress
Gets
Coffee
Period
" Many novice writers try to avoid using 'said' by substituting synonyms: 'he uttered,' 'she murmured,' 'he questioned.' It's true that any word repeated too often becomes monotonous, but substitutions for 'said' can be worse than its repetition. "
Nancy Kress
She
Avoid
Repetition
" Pace, like everything else in writing, involves a trade-off. If you're not offering the reader a lot of action to keep her interested, you must offer something else in its stead. Slow pace is ideal for complex character development, detailed description, and nuances of style. "
Nancy Kress
Action
You
Writing
" All writers, in all viewpoints, must choose which information and scenes will be presented, and in which order. In that sense, the author is always represented as a point of view in a work of fiction. His hand can always be detected by the discerning. "
Nancy Kress
Point Of View
View
Work
" A stereotype may be negative or positive, but even positive stereotypes present two problems: They are cliches, and they present a human being as far more simple and uniform than any human being actually is. "
Nancy Kress
Simple
Negative
Positive
" You have considerable choice in how you end your fiction. For all stories, the basic rule is the same: Choose the type of ending that best suits what's gone before. "
Nancy Kress
End
Best
Choice
" How many times have you opened a book, read the first few sentences and made a snap decision about whether to buy it? When it's your book that's coming under this casual-but-critical scrutiny, you want the reader to be instantly hooked. The way to accomplish this is to create compelling opening sentences. "
Nancy Kress
Accomplish
You
Decision
" The parallels between a stage and a book are compelling. You, like all authors, create 'characters' in a 'setting' who speak 'dialogue' encased in 'scenes.' Most importantly, you - like the playwright - have an 'audience.' "
Nancy Kress
Create
Like
Book
" In fiction, a reaction shot is a brief portrayal of how your character reacts to something that someone else has done. In contrast to more direct character building, your guy doesn't initiate the sequence; he completes it. Exactly how he completes it can tell readers a lot about him. "
Nancy Kress
Someone
Done
Character
" Every story makes a promise to the reader. Actually, two promises, one emotional and one intellectual, since the function of stories is to make us both feel and think. "
Nancy Kress
Think
Two
Story
" Before the scene, before the paragraph, even before the sentence, comes the word. Individual words and phrases are the building blocks of fiction, the genes that generate everything else. Use the right words, and your fiction can blossom. The French have a phrase for it - le mot juste - the exact right word in the exact right position. "
Nancy Kress
Right
Blossom
Building
" Even if your novel occurs in an unfamiliar setting in which all the customs and surroundings will seem strange to your reader, it's still better to start with action. The reason for this is simple. If the reader wanted an explanation of milieu, he would read nonfiction. He doesn't want information. He wants a story. "
Nancy Kress
Start
Story
Simple
" There are writers whose first drafts are so lean, so skimpy, that they must go back and add words, sentences, paragraphs to make their fiction intelligible or interesting. I don't know any of these writers. "
Nancy Kress
Interesting
Back
Go
" Words change over time. 'Condescending,' for instance, was once a good thing to be. It meant that a person was willing to interact politely with people of lower social ranks. In Jane Austen's world, a lady praised for her condescension was receiving a sincere compliment. "
Nancy Kress
Good
World
Words
" For the professional writer, stories must be presented as a series of individual scenes, each one dramatized with dialogue and telling descriptions of who is present and what they're all doing. "
Nancy Kress
Dialogue
Doing
Present
" As a writer, you must know what promise your story or novel makes. Your reader will know. "
Nancy Kress
You
Will
Story
" The reader is going to imprint on the characters he sees first. He is going to expect to see these people often, to have them figure largely into the story, possibly to care about them. Usually, this will be the protagonist. "
Nancy Kress
Will
Story
Care
" If your reader has been given a rousing opening, he will usually then sit still for at least some exposition. But be sure to follow that chunk of telling with one or more dramatized scenes. That's much more effective than being given section after section of telling. "
Nancy Kress
Your
Opening
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