A Quote by Laura van den Berg

With both novels and short stories, I think a lot in terms of character arcs, when it comes to endings.

Laura van den Berg

Quote Topics

Arcs Both Character Endings Lot Novels Short Short Stories Stories Terms Think

Quote Author

Laura van den Berg
American - Writer
Born: 1983

I've read short stories that are as dense as a 19th century novel and novels that really are short stories filled with a lot of helium.

Lynn Abbey

I hadn't meant to do the pattern of publishing short stories and then a novel. I thought, 'I'm a novelist. I know it.' But you have to kind of write a lot of bad novels before you can write a good one, I think, so I did that. But meanwhile, I loved the short stories I did.

Andrew Sean Greer

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.

Julian Barnes

I have some other novels I want to write. I have a lot of short stories - I love the short story.

George R. R. Martin

I tend to be more of a novel writer. In fact, some of my novels started out as short stories, and I just got carried away! I think some of my best writing is in the short story form, but novels come more naturally to me.

Bruce Coville

I think what's fun about the Western genre is the character arcs are very strong and, arguably, more interesting and exciting than the action that is metaphorically representational of those arcs.

Jon Favreau

I guess I would say that most of what I've learned about storytelling derives from novels and short stories. I cannot think of a novel or story, or a novelist or story writer, who thinks in terms of three-act structure.

Tom Bissell

You learn by writing short stories. Keep writing short stories. The money's in novels, but writing short stories keeps your writing lean and pointed.

Larry Niven

I still read romance, and I read suspense. I read them both. And part of it is, I like stories with strong characters, and I like stories where there's closure at the end. And I like stories where there's hope. That's a kind of empowerment. I think romance novels are very empowering, and I think suspense novels are, too.

Lisa Gardner

This was my first novel [The Dissemblers ]. I've never seriously written short stories, and actually find short stories much more intimidating as an art form than novels.

Liza Campbell

Writing short stories was kind of like I was cheating the whole time, in some way. I went back and forth between writing the novels and sort of sneaking out to work on stories occasionally. These stories were written over the last 10 years or so, as I was taking breaks from the novels I've written.

Dan Chaon

It took me a long time to know enough about writing to really write short stories. You can't just immerse yourself, as you do in a novel, and see where everything goes. Novels are a very flexible, accommodating form. Short stories aren't.

Thomas McGuane

I don't think 'Shotgon Stories' or 'Take Shelter' have hopeless endings. I think there's hope in both those films, no matter how hard you have to search for it. It's there.

Jeff Nichols

She should have done science, not spent all her time with her head in novels. Novels gave you a completely false idea about life, they told lies and they implied there were endings when in reality there were no endings, everything just went on and on and on.

Kate Atkinson

I started thinking about the endings of novels not because I think endings are so important, but because I think they're actually not as important as they're sometimes given credit for.