Top 1200 Story Writing Quotes & Sayings - Page 2

If we got writing assignments in English class to make up a story, that was when the glimmer of creativity popped out. That was way more interesting to me than writing down my life details.

I started writing when I was a journalist. But every time I sat down to write a novel or a story, I ended up writing about myself, which was incredibly annoying and self-involved.

That was one of the key things - when you asked the story about the writing of the story - one of the things we wanted to make sure was that it grew out of.

If it has something of substance and a platform that makes sense, I can share my story. You can get a little more into my life, and I can mesh my singing with things I love to do and writing for others and telling my story in hopes of helping someone. I'm all for it.

In 1970, at the age of 14, I entered a short story contest offering a grand prize of one dollar. I won. This was my first foray into writing fiction. I loved reading and thought that it shouldn't be so hard to write a story.

A short story is a sprint, a novel is a marathon. Sprinters have seconds to get from here to there and then they are finished. Marathoners have to carefully pace themselves so that they don't run out of energy (or in the case of the novelist-- ideas) because they have so far to run. To mix the metaphor, writing a short story is like having a short intense affair, whereas writing a novel is like a long rich marriage.

If it gets to a situation where it turns into a debate, look, the person that I'm debating is the person that is writing the story or presenting the broadcast. They're not going to write the story in such a way that shows they lost.

Then the writing became so fluid that I sometimes felt as if I were writing for the sheer pleasure of telling a story, which may be the human condition that most resembles levitation.

A dream inspiring a story is different than placing a description of a dream in a story. When you describe a character's dream, it has to be sharper than reality in some way, and more meaningful. It has to somehow speak to plot, character, and all the rest. If you're writing something fantastical, it can be a really deadly choice because your story already has elements that can seem dreamlike.

The greatest compliment a writer can be given is that a story and character hold a reader spellbound. Im caught up in the story writing and I miss a good deal of sleep thinking about it and working out the plot points.

The first thing you have to consider when writing a novel is your story, and then your story - and then your story!

The writing process is not just putting down one page after another-it's a lot of writing and then rewriting, restructuring the story, changing the way things come together.

After writing for TV for a while, I got sort of fed up with all of the cancellations and the volatility in that industry. Also, you're always writing for someone else's character and story, and I really wanted to develop my own.

It took a lot to understand that the interest in both writing a story and reading it is not in the objective dangers someone takes. You don't have to fight snakes or wake up in a strange apartment to have a story; it's about what goes on inside your mind and soul.

Actually, that's one of the things I was thinking about writing a story about me, loosely based or autobiographical. I just don't want to be like some people that are in their twenties and writing autobiographies.

Eventually the writing takes time. What I want to do is get the story down and I want to know what happens as I write my way into the knowledge of the story.

I just started writing and writing for people. And then, like I guess after (a) year of getting some placements, I kinda got a shot to be an artist. Long story short I think, yeah.

You know, the process of making a documentary is one of discovery, and like writing a story, you follow a lead and that leads you to something else and then by the time you finish, the story is nothing like you expected.

Knowing that a story needs to be told is a great motivator, even if telling a given story comes at a price. Writing Hunger has been the most difficult writing of my life, and it's the rawest and perhaps most necessary. We'll see how people take it. I always strive to write beyond personal catharsis because though I write first and foremost for myself, I do recognize that I need to look outward as much if not more than I look inward, so the reader has something with which they can engage.

Oh,Sara. It is like a story." "It is a story...everything is a story. You are a story-I am a story. Miss Minchin is a story.

At first, I see pictures of a story in my mind. Then creating the story comes from asking questions of myself. I guess you might call it the 'what if - what then' approach to writing and illustration.

Drawing' is telling a story with pictures. 'Writing' is telling a story with words.

The last story you should write is the most important story. You should start with a story that is just an amusing, entertaining, fun story to write and learn your writing chops with the least important things before you start applying them to the most important things.

I'm a creative person and I use painting, acting, writing, writing songs, or whatever, as tools to just get a point across, in order to communicate a story or an emotion.

The main rule of writing is that if you do it with enough assurance and confidence, you’re allowed to do whatever you like. (That may be a rule for life as well as for writing. But it’s definitely true for writing.) So write your story as it needs to be written. Write it honestly, and tell it as best you can. I’m not sure that there are any other rules. Not ones that matter.

The story was such that I couldn't make a graceful ending and then make a graceful new beginning. I could have, but I didn't want to. So, it isn't the most graceful way of writing a story. This new story is, I think, is pretty good stuff. I'm pleased with it anyway.

The craft, the writing of a song, is about creating a story, a life story, a world within three minutes, but that's the frame, if you like, the picture frame. That fascinates me.

If you can't write a story that pleases yourself, you will never please the public. But in writing the story forget the public.

Writing a short story is a little like walking into a dark room, finding a light and turning it on. The light is the end of the story.

It's difficult to write a really good short story because it must be a complete and finished reflection of life with only a few words to use as tools. There isn't time for bad writing in a short story.

I don't think I prefer writing for one age group above another. I am just as pleased with a story which I feel works well for very small children as I do with a story for young adults.

I was in Siena and decided I wanted to write a story set there. Then I discovered that the original story of Romeo and Juliet was set in Siena. It occurred to me that this was too much of a gift - I had to do it. That's how I ended up writing a parallel story to Romeo and Juliet.

You're reluctant to give too much away when you're going to put it out there for other people. It's harder writing your truest fears and loves and guilts, because you're not sure when you're writing the right story.

The story itself should force its moral upon you. You find out what the moral is by writing the story.

So here I am, sending a two-ounce mouse down into a dungeon with a sewing needle to save a human princess, and I don't know how in the world he's going to do it. I have no idea. That was the first time it occurred to me that writing the story was roughly equivalent to Despereaux's descent into the dungeon. I was tremendously aware of that as I was writing. I thought, "I have to be brave or else I'm not going to be able to tell it." But it's the only way that I can write. If I know what's going to happen, I'm not interested in telling the story.

I can't conceive of nursing babies and taking care of children and writing, too. I know there are writers that do that, but I'm too single-minded. I can't stand to be interrupted, whether I'm writing a story or dressing a child.

When I was ten, my mother told me to write down my feelings. I eventually started writing a book. I wish I'd kept the handwritten text. I recall some of the story, but it was a start into the world of writing.

The writing is really important in books that affect me. I read for the writing. The story is usually of less interest to me. It's the words that break your heart.

The difference between writing a story and simply relating past events is that a story, in order to be acceptable, must have shape and meaning. It is the old idea that art is the bringing of order out of chaos.

A novel is both a story and a piece of writing. A movie is a story and a piece of filmmaking.

I taught everyone a very bad lesson at my publisher because they actually gave me deadlines this time and I'm now meeting them. I used to say, "Here's my book; it's six years late." I'm so much faster now, and work differently. With all the years of writing, I think I still draft as obsessively, but I think back to writing. On your first story, you start at draft one. On your second story, you start at draft ten. On your third story, you start at draft one hundred. If you need a hundred and eight drafts, you may write eight instead of a hundred and eight.

At the same time, it's a family story and more of an epic. I needed the third-person. I tried to give a sense that Cal, in writing his story, is perhaps inventing his past as much as recalling it.

It is very tough to make a short film. It's like writing a short story, which is tougher than writing a novel. You can't afford to faff around; you can't indulge. You have to get to the point.

It wasn't long after I began writing Star Wars that I realized the story was more than a single film could hold. As the saga of the Skywalkers and Jedi Knights unfolded, I began to see it as a tale that could take at least nine films to tell - three trilogies - and I realized, in making my way through the back story and after story, that I was really setting out to make the middle story.

The difference when I'm writing a story versus writing a joke is that writing a joke is so much more about the structure and it's less about the conversation. To me, the thing that I love about stand-up is the intimacy between performer and audience.To get it even more conversational was something that really appealed to me and that I really enjoyed doing. My early experiments with it, with just telling a story from my life on stage, it was so satisfying to do. And seemingly for the audience as well. It's a different thing, and it's a different feeling and a different vibe.

Freedom begins the moment you realize someone else has been writing your story and it's time you took the pen from his hand and started writing it yourself.

I'm quite adept at writing two or sometimes even three stories at once. So if I get stuck on one story, I switch the next and let my subconscious work on unraveling any plot problems from another story.

I feel with this film that as long as we tell Philomena's story and as long as we're true to her, which Jeff and Steve have already done by writing the story... we must not sell her short;. She's a most remarkable woman and all my concern was that we must be absolutely true to her story.

Once you're into a story everything seems to apply-what you overhear on a city bus is exactly what your character would say on the page you're writing. Wherever you go, you meet part of your story.

I keep a journal, like many writers do. It helps in writing a story, as you can use an incident from the journal and put in your story.

When I was a kid, I'd go to the African-American section in the bookstore, and I'd try and find African-American people I hadn't read before. So in that sense the category was useful to me. But it's not useful to me as I write. I don't sit down to write an African-American zombie story or an African-American story about elevators. I'm writing a story about elevators which happens to talk about race in different ways. Or I'm writing a zombie novel which doesn't have that much to do with being black in America. That novel is really about survival.

For me, writing a short story is much, much harder than writing a novel.

Settings are obviously important - and as a writer, you have to respect what was real at the time of the story you're writing. But the real key to success lies in finding the right characters to carry that story.

In terms of writing characters or stories, at least initially, there's no difference between live-action and animation. A good story is a good story, whatever the medium.

Outlining is not writing. Coming up with ideas is not writing. Researching is not writing. Creating characters is not writing. Only writing is writing.

With me, a story usually begins with a single idea or mental picture. The writing of the story is simply a matter of working up to that moment, to explain why it happened or what caused it to follow.

I think it's a short story writer's duty, as well as writing well about emotions and characters, to write story.

If nobody is looking for a story, and I have no reason to write a story, I would really much rather to do anything else because it's no fun writing stories, particularly not for me. I just do it in order to sell them and make a couple of bucks.

I think, as writers, our first responsibility is to writing an honest story. Tell the story you want to tell, without pulling your punches.

Writing the short story is essentially an act of grace. It's not a matter of will so much as trust. I try to let the story do some of the work for me. It knows what it wants to do, say, be. I try not to stand in its way.