A Quote by Stacey Abrams

When I began writing novels, I read Aristotle to learn how to perfect structure, Pearl Cleage to sustain tension, and Nora Roberts for characterization.

Stacey Abrams

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Began Characterization How Learn Novels Pearl Perfect Read Roberts Structure Sustain Tension Writing

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Stacey Abrams
American - Politician
Born: December 9, 1973

The craft of writing is all the stuff that you can learn through school; go to workshops and read books. Learn characterization, plot and dialogue and pacing and word choice and point of view. Then there's also the art of it which is sort of the unknown, the inspiration, the stuff that is noncerebral.

Garth Stein

Read. Read. Read. Read many genres. Read good writing. Read bad writing and figure out the difference. Learn the craft of writing.

Carol Berg

Characterization is not divorced from plot, not a coat of paint you slap on after the structure of events is already built. Rather characterization is inseparable from plot.

Nancy Kress

Nora Roberts is cool.

Stephen King

You learn timing on the road. You learn structure and how to read an audience. You learn so much about the business of laughter that you can't learn on a set, because it's all on you. Sometimes you bomb, and you know not to tell that joke again... You just hope people find the humor in the awkwardness.

Marlon Wayans

Nora Roberts, Stephen King, Lee Child and George R. R. Martin write wildly different books. Their writing, plotting and styles have little or nothing in common. But they all write books and characters that readers find appealing.

M. J. Rose

I've never taken any classes or had formal training in writing novels. At its most basic, I learned how to structure a novel.

Dennis Green

When you learn to read and write, it opens up opportunities for you to learn so many other things. When you learn to read, you can then read to learn. And it's the same thing with coding. If you learn to code, you can code to learn. Now some of the things you can learn are sort of obvious. You learn more about how computers work.

Mitchel Resnick

My first attraction to writing novels was the plot, that almost extinct animal. Those novels I read which made me want to be a novelist were long, always plotted, novels - not just Victorian novels, but also those of my New England ancestors: Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne.

John Irving

I was born in North London in 1947. I didn't learn to read until I was almost 8-partly bad schooling, and partly I suspect slight dyslexic problems. My father, driven mad by this, taught me to read. At 9 I began writing.

Tanith Lee

When I am writing novels I don't read a lot of novels so I try to catch up in-between.

Salman Rushdie

You do not learn how to write novels in a writing program. You learn how by leading an interesting life. Open yourself up to all experience. Let life pour through you the way light pours through leaves.

Pat Conroy

I actually find something rewarding about that tension between satisfying myself and satisfying others. Because first of all, I can't provide my own structure, and that tension provides a structure for me to actually work within.

Andy Richter

If Nora Roberts were a man, she'd be on the cover of big business magazines as the next Charles Dickens.

Ann Maxwell

I won't read novels while writing novels.

Wally Lamb

Great novels have great characterization no matter what. But multiple points of view let me examine characters from entirely different perspectives, allowing me to learn more about everyone in the process.

Sabaa Tahir

A Quote by Stacey Abrams

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