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" 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
Related Quotes:
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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
" Overpopulated fiction can be so confusing that readers put the story down. Under-populated novels can seem claustrophobic or boring. You want the right number of characters for your particular work. "
Nancy Kress
Work
Want
You
" 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
" 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
" 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
" Conflict drives fiction; no one wants to read a four-hundred-page novel in which everything rolls along smoothly. "
Nancy Kress
Conflict
Fiction
Everything
" 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
" As a writer, you must know what promise your story or novel makes. Your reader will know. "
Nancy Kress
You
Will
Story
" 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
" 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
" Readers want to visualize your story as they read it. The more exact words you give them, the more clearly they see it, smell it, hear it, taste it. Thus, a dog should be an 'Airedale,' not just a 'dog.' A taste should not be merely 'good' but 'creamy and sweet' or 'sharply salty' or 'buttery on the tongue.' "
Nancy Kress
Sweet
Story
Dog
" 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
" 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
" A brief short story may require only a few paragraphs after the climax. On the other hand, in his massive novel 'The World According to Garp,' John Irving's denouement consisted of 10 separate sections, each devoted to an individual character's fate and each almost a story in itself. "
Nancy Kress
Story
Character
Fate
" In general, fiction is divided into 'literary fiction' and 'commercial fiction.' Nobody can definitively say what separates one from the other, but that doesn't stop everybody (including me) from trying. Your book probably will be perceived as one or the other, and that will affect how it is read, packaged and marketed. "
Nancy Kress
Stop
Say
Nobody
" All nonmimetic fiction is a balancing act between 'reality' and the obviously unreal, with no attempt by the author to make the latter seem like the former. Sometimes it's not an easy tightrope to walk. But when it succeeds, such fiction can brilliantly illuminate the human condition. "
Nancy Kress
Sometimes
Human
Reality
" 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
" Should you create a protagonist based directly on yourself? The problem with this - and it is a very large problem - is that almost no one can view himself objectively on the page. As the writer, you're too close to your own complicated makeup. "
Nancy Kress
Makeup
Yourself
View
" 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
" The climax is the place where the opposing forces in your story finally clash. This is true whether those opposing forces are two armies or two values inside a character's soul. "
Nancy Kress
Soul
Place
Character
" 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
" For commercial books in a genre, readers' and editors' expectations may be fairly rigid. Some romance lines, for instance, issue fairly detailed writers' guidelines explaining exactly what must happen in a book they publish (and what must not). "
Nancy Kress
Books
Book
Romance
" 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
" 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
" Novels have much more space than short stories, which gives you more leeway with the number of characters you can include. Even 'furniture' characters can be described and given speaking parts to develop background or atmosphere. "
Nancy Kress
More
Furniture
You
" The worldview implied by literary fiction is complex and ambiguous, trying to be faithful to the complexity and ambiguity of life. "
Nancy Kress
Trying
Life
Ambiguity
" 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