A Quote by Irwin Shaw

Writers of fiction, when they begin, are more likely to try the short form

Irwin Shaw

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Begin Fiction Form Likely More Short Try Writers

Quote Author

Irwin Shaw
American - Novelist
February 27, 1913 - May 16, 1984

Writers of fiction, when they begin, are more likely to try the short form.

Irwin Shaw

I seem to turn out stories that violate the discipline of the short story form and don't obey the rules of progression for novels. I don't think about a particular form: I think more about fiction, let's say a chunk of fiction.

Alice Munro

I'm more thrilled by the short fiction than I expected to be. I've found more pleasure in reading short fiction than I used to. By seeing what kinds of thinking are going on in short fiction. I was also surprised by the panic I've felt, especially at first, when we'd put an issue to bed and then realized we had to put another one together.

Lorin Stein

I was looking at a lot of experimental writers, and I was very intrigued by short-short fiction, writers who would write little things, what I call buttons now, little vignettes.

Sandra Cisneros

Short fiction encourages experimentation, and it's fun to play with form and try experiments that may or may not work out.

Ken Liu

I think all of us begin as writers. I wanted to be a writer from the time I as eight, long before I heard of jazz. The question is, once you have that obsession, what is your subject going to be and you often don't know for some time. It might become fiction, it might be non-fiction, and if it's non-fiction it can go in any number of directions.

Gary Giddins

I would also suggest that any aspiring writer begin with short stories. These days, I meet far too many young writers who try to start off with a novel right off, or a trilogy, or even a nine-book series. That's like starting in at rock climbing by tackling Mt. Everest. Short stories help you learn your craft.

George R. R. Martin

Fact is often stranger than fiction because most writers of fiction try to make their stories plausible.

Richard Posner

Research shows us that children who are read to from a very early age are more likely to begin reading themselves at an early age. They're more likely to excell in school. They're more likely to graduate secondary school and go to college.

Laura Bush

I love experimental writing, when it's good, and good examples are much more likely to be found in the short form.

Nicholas Royle

I don't believe that fiction is dead. I know there are some people who believe that it's an outdated art form, and that to express truth today you need to work in different forms, to write books where it's perhaps not clear what's fiction and what's memoir. I have nothing against those books and love many of them very much. But we have enough space for everyone, traditional realists and hybrid writers, and experimental writers all.

Lauren Groff

I'm one of those writers who started off writing novels and came to writing short stories later, partly because I didn't have the right ideas, partly because I think that short stories are more difficult. I think learning to write short stories also made me attracted toward a paring down of the novel form.