A Quote by Nancy Kress

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

Quote Topics

Adventure Along Better Book Certain Creates Drama Driven Genres Hooks Keep Moving Mystery Pacing Quick Rapidly Reader Readers Tension Things Thriller Vital Western Writing

Quote Author

Nancy Kress
American - Writer
Born: January 20, 1948

Humor is important for is pacing. If your whole book is just drama drama drama, it's going to wear down the reader.

Patrick Rothfuss

It's better not to know so much about what things mean or how they might be interpreted or you'll be too afraid to let things keep happening. Psychology destroys the mystery, this kind of magic quality. It can be reduced to certain neuroses or certain things, and since it is now named and defined, it's lost its mystery and the potential for a vast, infinite experience.

David Lynch

I would say that, in the future, the book will be reserved for things that function best as a book. So, if I need a textbook that's going to be out of date because of new technological inventions, you're better off having it where you can download the supplements or the update. If you're going to read a quick mystery novel to keep you amused while you're traveling, it's fine.

Art Spiegelman

I like to keep things moving; when I say moving, I mean different. I like to keep things changing in my life all the time, so sometimes it might be drama; sometimes it might be drama. At some point, I might get the chance to do something musical.

Debra Stephenson

There's a huge number of things that are occurring with the ice works which fascinate me enormously, but it's driven by this kind of frantic race against time. And whilst that creates a huge amount of tension and problems, it's a tension that I think I feed off.

Andy Goldsworthy

I'd love to do a sci-fi movie, a western, or an espionage thriller. But I'm not going to limit myself. If a good script comes along, I'm not going to discount it because it doesn't fit into one of these genres.

Park Chan-wook

I have been a part of four different genres - a political satire, gangster drama, thriller and period drama.

Shriya Pilgaonkar

I'm a stickler for structure. So I tend to make sure I'm hitting certain points in the script and that I'm progressing and moving things along. You know, are the characters keeping the plot moving along? And are they true, and do I know their motivations?

Allison Schroeder

Instincts are learned on the football field through experience. It's vital in sports because things happen so rapidly that you have to rely on your instincts at times to make quick decisions.

Doug Baldwin

I like writing teen characters because they’re vulnerable to the newness of things; and vulnerability makes emotional responses raw, vital and unguarded. Lacking a context of consequences, choices are riskier and stakes higher. Life is lived without a safety net. As an author and reader, I find that a mighty charge to drama.

Allan Stratton

One key to the distinction between mystery and suspense writing involves the relative positions of hero and reader. In the ideal mystery novel, the readers is two steps behind the detective.... The ideal suspense reader, on the other hand, is two steps ahead of the hero.

Carolyn Wheat

Along the way, about certain things, you realize, "I don't know anything about this." You think, "Is this going to sound ridiculous?" So I pestered more than a hundred different people over the course of the book. And when I finished the book I gave it to six or seven trusted readers, who are always the same, but I also gave it to a brother of mine who's a doctor and I asked him to read it, and he was very helpful. It's good to have a group of trusted readers. As my kids have grown up, they've joined this group.

Jaume Cabre

One of the great things about writing a series is that with each book, the novel is meant to stand alone on its own legs, but also to bring along those loyal readers who become attached to the characters over the years.

Linda Fairstein

A reader is entitled to believe what he or she believes is consonant with the facts of the book. It is not unusual that readers take away something that is spiritually at variance from what I myself experienced. That's not to say readers make up the book they want. We all have to agree on the facts. But readers bring their histories and all sets of longings. A book will pluck the strings of those longings differently among different readers.

Richard Ford

When I'm writing, I'm thinking, "Well, this might be a book that I'll always be happy with, and certainly readers will be happy with." But another part of me knows that when I'm past the stage of writing, the book is gonna have good things about it, bad things about it - probably more bad than good. I just know that. That's who I am.