800 Literature, rhetoric & criticism
"When modern critics think they are demystifying literature, they are in fact being demystified by it. But since this necessarily occurs in the form of a crisis, they are blind to what takes place within themselves. What they call anthropology, linguistics, psychoanalysis, is nothing but literature reappearing like the hydra's head in the very spot where it had been suppressed. The human mind will go through amazing feats to avoid facing 'the nothingness of human matters'."
— Paul De Man (Blindness and Insight: Essays in the Rhetoric of Contemporary Criticism)
"Literary works are pieces of rhetoric as well as reports. They demand a peculiarly vigilant kind of reading, one which is alert to tone, mood, pace, genre, syntax, grammar, texture, rhythm, narrative structure, punctuation, ambiguity – in fact to everything that comes under the heading of ‘form’."
— Terry Eagleton (How to Read Literature)
"The true reader reads every work seriously in the sense that he reads it whole-heartedly, makes himself as receptive as he can. But for that very reason he cannot possibly read every work solemly or gravely. For he will read 'in the same spirit that the author writ.'... He will never commit the error of trying to munch whipped cream as if it were venison."
— C.S. Lewis (An Experiment in Criticism)
808 Writing
Why do we sit down in our writing space, only to pop out of the chair to look for answers in the refrigerator, empty the dishwasher, check the mail, or get another book to use for research? Why do we have great ideas when we’re in the shower or driving on the freeway, then freeze and not know how to start when we get to our writing space?Why do we distract ourselves with a multitude of other things to do and think about? Why do we paralyze ourselves with self-criticism and perfectionism? Why is it so damned hard to write?
-Rosanne Bane, Around the Writer's Block
I love the resource of the Internet. I use it all the time. Anything I'm writing - for example, if I'm writing a scene about Washington D.C. and I want to know where this monument is, I can find it right away, I can get a picture of the monument, it just makes your life so much easier, especially if you're writing fiction. You can check stuff so much quicker, and I think that's all great for writers.
-Dave Barry, Writing, Thinking, Fiction: www.writersdigest.com
“You must write every single day of your life... You must lurk in libraries and climb the stacks like ladders to sniff books like perfumes and wear books like hats upon your crazy heads... may you be in love every day for the next 20,000 days. And out of that love, remake a world.”
― Ray Bradbury
“If you stuff yourself full of poems, essays, plays, stories, novels, films, comic strips, magazines, music, you automatically explode every morning like Old Faithful. I have never had a dry spell in my life, mainly because I feed myself well, to the point of bursting. I wake early and hear my morning voices leaping around in my head like jumping beans. I get out of bed to trap them before they escape.”
― Ray Bradbury
I am always dabbling in my current book, no matter the time or place, thinking about some aspect of the writing that I haven’t quite gotten right or executed well enough. It doesn’t command my entire attention, just enough of it that I seem constantly distracted. Various dilemmas and concerns steal me away. Sometimes it is a character that hasn’t been fully developed. Sometimes it is a plot element that just doesn’t fit quite the way it should. Sometimes it is something as mundane as a name that needs rethinking. Sometimes it is your basic insecurity attack; I just know that what I have written the day before is dreck and will have to be thrown out. Sometimes I am just thinking ahead to the next day’s writing and beginning to put the images together in my mind. But it is always something, as the saying goes. There is never a moment when I am not involved in thinking about writing. I can’t put it out of my mind entirely, even in the most trying of circumstances. You might as well ask me to stop breathing; thinking about my writing is as much a function of my life. So when my family and friends discover I am not listening to them or they catch me staring off into space, I can’t do a thing about it, because that’s just the way I am. It is the way all writers are, I suspect. The muse whispers to you when she chooses, and you can’t tell her to come back later, because you quickly learn in this business that she might not come back at all. Some of this has to do with writers being observers. We don’t become involved so much as we watch and take notes. Much of what happens around us goes into a storage bin in our minds for future consideration and possible use in a book down the line. What we observe is as important to us in determining what we write as what we know. Frequently those annoying distractions we experience are just instances of recording our observations because we think they might suggest, on reflection, further writing possibilities.
-Terry Brooks, Sometimes the Magic Works
“Writer’s block results from too much head. Cut off your head. Pegasus, poetry, was born of Medusa when her head was cut off. You have to be reckless when writing. Be as crazy as your conscience allows.”
― Joseph Campbell, A Joseph Campbell Companion: Reflections on the Art of Living
You cannot become a terrific writer just—poof!—out of thin air. It takes something preexisting, some structural savvy, some foundation in technique, some underlying sense of the possibilities of language before you can strip off your topcoat and tap dance across the pages like Fred Astaire.
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You too can imitate the greats, and in the process absorb elements of their style that will make your writing sing. The point is that the rhetorical device of imitation will help you grow as a writer, just as it helped Milton, Melville, Flaubert, Faulkner, Dickens, and Shakespeare. More importantly, you cannot expect to reach your full potential as a writer unless you learn to absorb from other writers by using the technique of imitation.
-William Cane, Fiction Writing Master Class: Emulating the Work of Great Novelists to Master the Fundamentals of Craft
Exciting opening action should result in bigger trouble for the protagonist, so why bog things down with a rambling back story? Use an ambush instead to hook readers. Then they will want to see what Princess Shequ does next. Can she make it out of the wilderness and find help before she dies of the venom festering in her wound? As you hook readers—drawing them in via exciting action and plenty of trouble for your characters—you will make them curious to learn more. Small snippets of background can be woven in from time to time —not too much, mind! Use just a little, here and there. A sentence or two of explanation is fine. At first, raise questions in a reader’s mind and pique his curiosity. Think of the film E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982) and how the boy Elliot entices the alien from the dog house by placing pieces of candy on the ground. He spaces each one so that E.T. has to venture from hiding in order to pick them up. In a similar way, lure your readers into wanting to know the history or the background. Promise to explain later. Don’t bludgeon your audience at the start with what they’re not yet interested in receiving.
-Deborah Chester, The Fantasy Fiction Formula
“Writers possess only four tools: research, experience, empathy, and imagination. Fortunately, whole worlds can be built from them.”
― David Corbett, The Art of Character: Creating Memorable Characters for Fiction, Film, and TV
“There was a moment when I changed from an amateur to a professional. I assumed the burden of a profession, which is to write even when you don't want to, don't much like what you're writing, and aren't writing particularly well.”
― Agatha Christie, An Autobiography
We’ve written tales on many things over the past few thousand years: stone tablets, ivory, tree bark, palm leaves... Historians have even discovered copies of The Iliad and The Odyssey written out on the dried skins of serpents. The Ancient Romans used the inner bark of trees to write on, a peel called liber, which in turn became the Latin word libri, meaning book, and subsequently livre, libro and library. The Ancient Greeks wrote on parchment, the Egyptians on papyrus; the Chinese invention of paper didn’t reach Europe for nearly a thousand years. In the Ancient world, most books were read out in public by would-be writers – the notion of silent reading came much later – and if an audience approved, it was likely that a patron would pay to have the author’s work copied out by slaves. Such patrons were the first publishers, and the book stalls they would set up near temples and in the food markets of central town squares were the first bookshops.
Jen Campbell, The Bookshop Book
“The book is a film that takes place in the mind of the reader. That's why we go to movies and say, "Oh, the book is better.”
― Paulo Coelho
“I am a writer. Imagining what someone would say or do comes to me as naturally as breathing.”
― Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking
“You know, it's hard work to write a book. I can't tell you how many times I really get going on an idea, then my quill breaks. Or I spill ink all over my writing tunic.”
― Ellen DeGeneres, The Funny Thing Is...
“A work in progress quickly becomes feral. It reverts to a wild state overnight. It is barely domesticated, a mustang on which you one day fastened a halter, but which now you cannot catch. It is a lion you cage in your study. As the work grows, it gets harder to control; it is a lion growing in strength. You must visit it every day and reassert your mastery over it. If you skip a day, you are, quite rightly, afraid to open the door to its room. You enter its room with bravura, holding a chair at the thing and shouting, "Simba!”
― Annie Dillard, The Writing Life
“Out of a human population on earth of four and a half billion, perhaps twenty people can write a book in a year. Some people lift cars, too. Some people enter week-long sled-dog races, go over Niagara Falls in a barrel, fly planes through the Arc de Triomphe. Some people feel no pain in childbirth. Some people eat cars. There is no call to take human extremes as norms.”
― Annie Dillard, The Writing Life
The secret to writing a novel is there is no secret. You write a novel by writing. You get better at writing novels by writing more novels.
Odds are the first time you baked a loaf of bread it was a disaster. And the first time you took a swing at a golf ball you may have missed the ball and tee completely. If you got better at either it’s because you didn’t retreat into the world of the theoretical (only reading recipes or only watching pro golfers on TV) but got back in the kitchen and back on the links and . . . Made a horrible batch of biscuits or shot an absolutely embarrassing round of golf. Until . . . You learned . . . by doing. What you’re doing now isn’t just writing a novel but also learning how to write a novel.
-Bill Dodds, How to Write Your Novel in Nine Weeks
“When I write, I fall into the zone many writers, painters, musicians, athletes, and craftsmen of all sorts seem to share: In doing something I enjoy and am expert at, deliberate thought falls aside and it is all just THERE. I think of the next word no more than the composer thinks of the next note.”
― Roger Ebert, Life Itself
Without exception everyone was born with creative ability. It is essential that people be given the opportunity to express themselves. If Balzac, De Maupassant, O. Henry, hadn’t learned to write, they might have become inveterate liars, instead of great writers. Every human being needs an outlet for his inborn creative talent. If you feel you would like to write, then write. Perhaps you are afraid that lack of a higher education might retard you from real accomplishment? Forget it. Many great writers, Shakespeare, Ibsen, George Bernard Shaw, to mention a few, never saw the inside of a college. Even if you will never be a genius, your enjoyment of life can still be great.
-Lajos Egri, The Art of Dramatic Writing: Its Basis in the Creative Interpretation of Human Motives .
“During the writing process you're going to discover things about yourself you never knew. For example, if you're writing about something that happened to you, you may re-experience some old feelings and emotions. You may get 'wacky' and irritable and live each day as if you were on an emotional roller coaster. Don't worry. Just keep writing.”
― Syd Field, Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting
“There are a lot of ways for a novelist to create suspense, but also really only two: one a trick, one an art.
The trick is to keep a secret. Or many secrets, even. In Lee Child’s books, Jack Reacher always has a big mystery to crack, but there are a series of smaller mysteries in the meantime, too, a new one appearing as soon as the last is resolved. J. K. Rowling is another master of this technique — Who gave Harry that Firebolt? How is Rita Skeeter getting her info?
The art, meanwhile, the thing that makes “Pride and Prejudice” so superbly suspenseful, more suspenseful than the slickest spy novel, is to write stories in which characters must make decisions. “Breaking Bad” kept a few secrets from its audience, but for the most part it was fantastically adept at forcing Walter and Jesse into choice, into action. The same is true of “Freedom,” or “My Brilliant Friend,” or “Anna Karenina,” all novels that are hard to stop reading even when it seems as if it should be easy.”
― Charles Finch
“How could poetry and literature have arisen from something as plebian as the cuneiform equivalent of grocery-store bar codes? I prefer the version in which Prometheus brought writing to man from the gods. But then I remind myself that…we should not be too fastidious about where great ideas come from. Ultimately, they all come from a wrinkled organ that at its healthiest has the color and consistency of toothpaste, and in the end only withers and dies.”
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“What do prisoners do? Write, of course; even if they have to use blood as ink, as the Marquis de Sade did. The reasons they write, the exquisitely frustrating restrictions of their autonomy and the fact that no one listens to their cries, are all the reasons that mentally ill people, and even many normal people write. We write to escape our prisons.”
― Alice Weaver Flaherty, The Midnight Disease: The Drive to Write, Writer's Block, and the Creative Brain
“An author in his book must be like God in the universe, present everywhere and visible nowhere.”
― Gustave Flaubert
“It has been said that Ernest Hemingway would rewrite scenes
until they pleased him, often thirty or forty times. Hemingway,
critics claimed, was a genius. Was it his genius that drove
him to work hard, or was it hard work that resulted in works
of genius?”
― James N. Frey, How to Write a Damn Good Novel: A Step-by-Step No Nonsense Guide to Dramatic Storytelling
Dear Neil, If you could choose a quote—either by you or another author—to be inscribed on the wall of a public library children’s area, what would it be? Thanks!
Lynn
Dear Lynn, I’m not sure I’d put a quote up, if it was me, and I had a library wall to deface. I think I’d just remind people of the power of stories, of why they exist in the first place. I’d put up the four words that anyone telling a story wants to hear. The ones that show that it’s working, and that pages will be turned: “
…and then what happened?”
Neil
The four words that children ask, when you pause, telling them a story. The four words you hear at the end of a chapter. The four words, spoken or unspoken, that show you, as a storyteller, that people care. The joy of fiction, for some of us, is the joy of the imagination, set free from the world and able to imagine.
Neil Gaiman, Stories
“I want to be clear about this. If you wrote from experience, you'd get maybe one book, maybe three poems. Writers write from empathy.”
― Nikki Giovanni
Your goal, as a storyteller, is to evoke the sense of wonder in your audience. You start by evoking the sense of wonder in yourself. Where one person is awestruck, others are also likely to be amazed. Think of it this way: Your own head is your test lab, so you have to wake up your own imagination first, drag it out of bed, force it outside, barefoot, shivering in its pajamas, to look up at the dark blazing sky. There is no better way to apply CPR to a snoozing imagination than by confronting it with a skyful of dazzling stars and a bright gibbous moon. Yes, you think you know what the sky looks like—but go outside and look at it again. It will surprise you. Every time. And in that moment of surprise, that’s when you are most alive. Your astonished intake of breath is you listening to the universe. Evoke that awe when you share the moment. Your job is to look for surprises in the world. And share them.
-David Gerrold, Worlds of Wonder: How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy
“Nothing frustrates me more than someone who reads something of mine or anyone else's and says, angrily, 'I don't buy it.' Why are they angry? Good writing does not succeed or fail on the strength of its ability to persuade. It succeeds or fails on the strength of its ability to engage you, to make you think, to give you a glimpse into someone else's head—even if in the end you conclude that someone else's head is not a place you'd really like to be.”
― Malcolm Gladwell, What the Dog Saw and Other Adventures
“Writing is a form of therapy; sometimes I wonder how all those who do not write, compose, or paint can manage to escape the madness, melancholia, the panic and fear which is inherent in a human situation.”
― Graham Greene, Ways of Escape
“Writers are thieves, We steal stories. We steal names. We steal scenes. We observe the world and we take what we need and modify it.”
― John Grisham
“Play around. Dive into absurdity and write. Take chances. You will succeed if you are fearless of failure.”
― Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within
“Writing is mostly a mind game. It’s about tricking yourself into becoming who you are. If you do this long enough, you begin to believe it. And pretty soon, you start acting like it.”
― Jeff Goins, You Are A Writer
“I would give them (aspiring writers) the oldest advice in the craft: Read and write. Read a lot. Read new authors and established ones, read people whose work is in the same vein as yours and those whose genre is totally different. You've heard of chain-smokers. Writers, especially beginners, need to be chain-readers. And lastly, write every day. Write about things that get under your skin and keep you up at night.”
― Khaled Hosseini
“Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is non-existent. And don’t bother concealing your thievery - celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: “It’s not where you take things from - it’s where you take them to."
― Jim Jarmusch ,[MovieMaker Magazine #53 - Winter, January 22, 2004 ]”
Yes, e-books can be written and produced by anyone, including by millions who don't know how to join a subject to a predicate without committing a grammatical misdemeanor. That means there truly is a lot of dreck. But, over time, that dreck will sink to the bottom because few will part with ready cash for it, no matter how cheap the dreck may be offered.
-Karl Keating
“Writers are magicians. They write down words, and, if they’re good, you believe that what they write is real, just as you believe a good magician has pulled the coins out of your ear, or made his assistant disappear. But the words on the page have no connection to the person who wrote them. Writers live other peoples’ lives for them.”
― W.P. Kinsella, Shoeless Joe
“If you don't have time to read, you don't have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that.”
― Stephen King
“Let's get one thing clear right now, shall we? There is no Idea Dump, no Story Central, no Island of the Buried Bestsellers; good story ideas seem to come quite literally from nowhere, sailing at you right out of the empty sky: two previously unrelated ideas come together and make something new under the sun. Your job isn't to find these ideas but to recognize them when they show up.”
― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
In the brain, too, there is enormous variability. The kinds and numbers of cells in a given area are different inside every skull. Your brain is more individual than your fingerprints. Among the writers I have known, one habitually worked lying down in the dark, in a trailer with its windows painted black, dictating into a tape recorder. Another, when he wanted to think about a new novel, got on a bus to a destination about four hours away—it didn’t matter where. When he arrived, he boarded another bus and rode back; by the time he got home, he would have the novel all plotted out. Another meditated about a novel for three months, then sat down in a specially designed cubicle, smaller than a telephone booth, and typed furiously for thirty hours straight. When he came out, the novel was done. It follows that you must learn to write your own way, or you can never learn at all. I don’t mean that you can do whatever you please; you still have to communicate with the rest of us. I just mean that nobody can tell you exactly how to do it. “Here are the rules,” I say; but when you are skilled enough, you will certainly bend some of these rules and break others. “Writing talent” is not all one thing: it is a cluster of abilities—verbal facility, imagination, “storytelling ability,” sense of drama, of structure, of rhythm, and probably a lot of others that nobody has put a name to. You may have a great ear for dialogue, for instance, but be poor at visual description; or you may be weak at plotting but have a strong narrative sense. Your first job is to find out your strengths and weaknesses—many of the exercises in this book are designed to help you do so—and your second is to learn to get the most out of what you have.
-Damon Knight, Creating Short Fiction
“But once an idea for a novel seizes a writer...well, it’s like an inner fire that at first warms you and makes you feel good but then begins to eat you alive, burn you up from within. You can’t just walk away from the fire; it keeps burning. The only way to put it out is to write the book.”
― Dean Koontz, Lightning
For the writers among us, the urge to communicate more clearly, more beautifully, and in new ways never really left us. With the right words, new worlds can be created, new ideas can be incubated and grown, great heights and depths can be reached. Every brilliant idea had its first home in the written or spoken word, and if you are a writer or aspire to be one, you most likely understand this
power better than anything. So, why write? Why be creative at all? Creativity is perhaps the most uniquely human characteristic, and it’s no exaggeration that many have linked it to the divine. Creativity is the ability to look out over the vista of of reality, and have the courage to wonder, “what if this was some other way?”
-Simeon Lindstrom, Creative Writing - From Think To Ink: Learn How To Unleash Your Creative Self and Discover Why You Don't Need 1000 Writing Prompts To Blast Away Your Writer's Block and Improve Your Writing Skills
A writer is someone for whom writing is more
difficult than it is for other people. — THOMAS MANN
When a work of art is good, that’s partly because it’s unique. It’s part of art’s goodness that it feels creative, crisp, different. This is particularly true in storytelling. When a story feels new and different, it’s a sign it is working well. When stories fail, they tend to do so for all the same reasons, which make them feel beginnerish, derivative, and hackneyed. But getting a visual story to the ecstasy of “new” is a kind of agony for the writer. The task is complicated: The only sure way to make something feel really fresh and new is to use classical storytelling techniques that have been set in stone for thousands of years. It’s only by skillfully reaching backward that a writer can move his or her story forward. This is because story has a nature and a form that must be adhered to, or the thing created will not be a story. The challenge is to make something new using the existing form.
-Barbara Nicolosi, Notes to Screenwriters: Advancing Your Story, Screenplay, and Career With Whatever Hollywood Throws at You
Stories are inside us waiting to be written. We may not know what they are, but we know something. If someone tells you—or you tell yourself—that two people are coming out of a building, you’ll find you know something, right away, about those two people. You won’t make decisions about them; you’ll see them in your mind’s eye. Maybe one is wearing a hat. Maybe one is laughing. When you ask questions about them, answers will slowly come. You must be patient and receptive. - Alice Mattison
-Sherry Ellis, Now Write! (Now Write! Series)
“Anyone can write five people trapped in a snowstorm. The question is how you get them into the snowstorm. It's hard to write a good play because it's hard to structure a plot. If you can think of it off the top of your head, so can the audience. To think of a plot that is, as Aristotle says, surprising and yet inevitable, is a lot, lot, lot of work.”
― David Mamet
I spent months—was it years?—arranging and rearranging lists of several thousand titles. What classics were compelling enough to earn a spot? Which kids’ books so timeless they made the grade? What currents of thought retained their currency? Which life stories were larger than their protagonist’s life span? Not least, what authors did I love so much that they might be ushered in without their credentials being subject to too much scrutiny? My answers to all the above questions almost certainly will not be yours. Even where we agree, my description of a book might not highlight the things that have made you love it. A text is never static: Every sentence wends its way into the ear and mind of one reader differently than it is welcomed, or invites itself, into those of another. Just as a musician brings a score to life, so a reader animates an author’s pages; as Emerson said, “‘Tis the good reader that makes the good book.” And true readers talk and listen to one another, recommend and contend, make lists in the service of their search for another volume; it’s all part of the dance of serendipity and conversation that sweeps up all genuine book lovers time and again. Once people know you are writing a book called 1,000 Books to Read Before You Die, you can never enjoy a dinner party in quite the way you did before. No matter how many books you’ve managed to consider, and no matter how many pages you’ve written, every conversation with a fellow reader is almost sure to provide new titles to seek out, or, more worryingly, to expose an egregious omission or a gap in your knowledge—to say nothing of revealing the privileges and prejudices, however unwitting, underlying your points of reference.
-James Mustich, 1,000 Books to Read Before You Die: A Life-Changing List
Start with your childhood, I tell them. Plug your nose and jump in, and write down all your memories as truthfully as you can. Flannery O' Connor said that anyone who has survived childhood has enough material to write for the rest of his or her life. Maybe your childhood was grim and horrible, but grim and horrible is Okay if it is well done. Don't worry about doing it well yet, though. Just get it down.”
― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life
“You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children.”
― Madeleine L'Engle
“If you’re going to be a writer, the first essential is just to write. Do not wait for an idea. Start writing something and the ideas will come. You have to turn the faucet on before the water starts to flow.”
― Louis L’Amour
“I write fiction for lots of reasons. One is power. I'm in charge when I write. So are you. You create the world of the story. You make the rules.”
― Gail Carson Levine, Writing Magic: Creating Stories that Fly
BEYOND THE POWER of the pen, fiction writers wield the power of imagination, which has stirred the greatest passions and accomplishments that humanity has ever known. We tell stories. That’s all, you say. Yet, telling stories is at the core of being human. The past exists only in how we talk about it—to ourselves and others. The present exists in our moment-to-moment description of what is real, while the future is merely a set of stories we affirm, anticipate, or resist. Even so, few people would argue that a difference does exist between fiction and nonfiction, between the imaginative creation and our corporeal reality. In the hands of a master storyteller, the line between the two is, perhaps, inconsequential. Story can be every bit as powerful and life-altering as true life. The elixir of writing fiction for many of us is the undiluted freedom to project onto paper imagined people and events with the force of emotion we usually reserve for real life. The elixir, carried by a writer’s emotion, transfers to readers, placing them under a spell and carrying them away into a virtual world. Here, without risking death, danger, or transmutation, a reader can vicariously experience life’s worst and best, and what is physically impossible.
-Elizabeth Lyon, A Writer's Guide to Fiction (Writers Guide Series
There is nothing more nerve-racking than waiting as someone reads your writing. The reader becomes the videographer, zooming far, far into your heart and soul, unveiling every inch and corner. The writer remains a wary observer at the mercy of the reader, clueless as to how he might react. The writer is exposed, laid bare; her innermost thoughts and feelings are revealed in a potentially scathing moment of vulnerability.
-Gina. Marinello-Sweeney, I Thirst (The Veritas Chronicles Book 1)
“I think there are two types of writers, the architects and the gardeners. The architects plan everything ahead of time, like an architect building a house. They know how many rooms are going to be in the house, what kind of roof they're going to have, where the wires are going to run, what kind of plumbing there's going to be. They have the whole thing designed and blueprinted out before they even nail the first board up. The gardeners dig a hole, drop in a seed and water it. They kind of know what seed it is, they know if planted a fantasy seed or mystery seed or whatever. But as the plant comes up and they water it, they don't know how many branches it's going to have, they find out as it grows. And I'm much more a gardener than an architect.”
― George R.R. Martin
“Do research. Feed your talent. Research not only wins the war on cliché, it's the key to victory over fear and it's cousin, depression.”
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“Good story' means something worth telling that the world wants to hear. Finding this is your lonely task...But the love of a good story, of terrific characters and a world driven by your passion, courage, and creative gifts is still not enough. Your goal must be a good story well told.”
― Robert McKee, Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting
“I love writing. I love the swirl and swing of words as they tangle with human emotions.”
― James Michener
“If you are a writer you locate yourself behind a wall of silence and no matter what you are doing, driving a car or walking or doing housework you can still be writing, because you have that space.”
― Joyce Carol Oates
“There is no excuse for anyone to write fiction for public consumption unless he has been called to do so by the presence of a gift. It is the nature of fiction not to be good for much unless it is good in itself.”
― Flannery O'Connor, Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose
“All writers are vain, selfish, and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives there lies a mystery. Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand. For all one knows that demon is simply the same instinct that makes a baby squall for attention. And yet it is also true that one can write nothing readable unless one constantly struggles to efface one's own personality. Good prose is like a windowpane.”
― George Orwell, Why I Write
“I wish I could write as mysterious as a cat.”
― Edgar Allan Poe
The reader is not impressed that you managed to bang out this whole 90,000-word space opera in only three weeks (‘I was on a roll! I hardly slept!’) – the reader only cares whether your 90,000-word space opera is any good. It is no use addressing your imaginary reader with ‘Hey, maybe my book isn’t perfect, but you gotta understand the trials and tribulations I underwent writing it …’ Your girlfriend or boyfriend might conceivably care about that. Your friends may care. Your mother should care. But your readers have no obligation to forgive shoddy work because you happened to be going through a tough time writing it.
-Adam Roberts, Get Started in: Writing Science Fiction and Fantasy
“The writers are like the jazz musicians who give us a familiar melody at the opening of the piece so that we can understand the variations that follow. We do not listen for that melody. We listen for the variations”
-Thomas J. Roberts, An Aesthetics of Junk Fiction
“A man once asked me ... how I managed in my books to write such natural conversation between men when they were by themselves. Was I, by any chance, a member of a large, mixed family with a lot of male friends? I replied that, on the contrary, I was an only child and had practically never seen or spoken to any men of my own age till I was about twenty-five. "Well," said the man, "I shouldn't have expected a woman (meaning me) to have been able to make it so convincing." I replied that I had coped with this difficult problem by making my men talk, as far as possible, like ordinary human beings. This aspect of the matter seemed to surprise the other speaker; he said no more, but took it away to chew it over. One of these days it may quite likely occur to him that women, as well as men, when left to themselves, talk very much like human beings also.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, Are Women Human? Astute and Witty Essays on the Role of Women in Society
One day in an eighth-grade class we had a vocational-guidance session, during the course of which that teacher said to me, “I understand from your parents that you’re thinking of becoming a writer.” That was complete news to me. I stood there stunned, examining and reexamining the thought. A writer? Well, of course, I was writing all sorts of stories, always had, and I was the editor of the school paper, because I was always the editor of the school paper wherever I went to school, and I plainly had a way with words, and won spelling bees—but a writer? Someone who wrote for his living? That had never crossed my mind. Honestly. I was going to be a paleontologist, I thought, and spend my days out in Wyoming digging up dinosaurs. Or do something in botany, maybe. A writer? Did that make any sense? Well . . . maybe . . . I think the damage was done, right then and there, that afternoon in the eighth grade. If it seemed obvious to everybody but me that I was going to be a writer, why, maybe I should give the idea a little thought. By such glancing blows are our fates determined.
-Robert K Silverberg, Science Fiction: 101
“Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader, not the fact that it’s raining, but the feeling of being rained upon.”
― Sol Stein, Stein On Writing: A Master Editor of Some of the Most Successful Writers of Our Century Shares His Craft Techniques and Strategies
“Writers are a little below clowns and a little above trained seals.”
― John Steinbeck
“Because liking the person we go on a journey with is the single most important element in drawing us into the story.”
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
“You can be near the cliché, you can dance around it, you can run right up to it and almost embrace it. But at the last second you must turn away.
You must give it a twist.”
― Blake Snyder, Save the Cat: The Last Book on Screenwriting You'll Ever Need
“The two most engaging powers of a good author are to make new things familiar and familiar things new.”
― William M. Thackeray
“When asked about rewriting, Ernest Hemingway said that he rewrote the ending to A Farewell to Arms thirty-nine times before he was satisfied. Vladimir Nabokov wrote that spontaneous eloquence seemed like a miracle and that he rewrote every word he ever published, and often several times. And Mark Strand, former poet laureate, says that each of his poems sometimes goes through forty to fifty drafts before it is finished.”
― Susan M. Tiberghien, One Year to a Writing Life: Twelve Lessons to Deepen Every Writer's Art and Craft
“Thurber was asked by a correspondent: "Why did you have a comma in the sentence, 'After dinner, the men went into the living-room'?" And his answer was probably one of the loveliest things ever said about punctuation. "This particular comma," Thurber explained, "was Ross's way of giving the men time to push back their chairs and stand up.”
― Lynne Truss, Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation
“It's true that writing is a solitary occupation, but you would be surprised at how much companionship a group of imaginary characters can offer once you get to know them.”
― Anne Tyler
“Imbuing fiction with a life that extends beyond the last word is in some ways the goal: the ending that goes beyond the ending in the reader's mind, so invested are they in the story.”
― Jeff VanderMeer, Wonderbook: The Illustrated Guide to Creating Imaginative Fiction
“I realized that the good stories were affecting the organs of my body in various ways, and the really good ones were stimulating more than one organ. An effective story grabs your gut, tightens your throat, makes your heart race and your lungs pump, brings tears to your eyes or an explosion of laughter to your lips.”
― Christopher Vogler, The Writer's Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers
“Now lend me your ears. Here is Creative Writing 101:
1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
4. Every sentence must do one of two things—reveal character or advance the action.
5. Start as close to the end as possible.
6. Be a sadist. No matter sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them—in order that the reader may see what they are made of.
7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.
The greatest American short story writer of my generation was Flannery O'Connor (1925-1964). She broke practically every one of my rules but the first. Great writers tend to do that.”
― Kurt Vonnegut jr.
“The mind travels faster than the pen; consequently, writing becomes a question of learning to make occasional wing shots, bringing down the bird of thought as it flashes by. A writer is a gunner, sometimes waiting in the blind for something to come in, sometimes roaming the countryside hoping to scare something up.”
― E.B. White, The Elements of Style
Readers don’t need to know the grass is green or that the sky is blue, but they do
need to know that the pub is to the left of the supermarket, just down the road from your character’s house. There needs to be an infrastructure to the world you are creating. Give them a beauty that readers can picture. Tell us how dark the mahogany floor is.
-R.S Williams, How to Start Writing Science Fiction and Fantasy: Bringing Ideas to Life
“Writing a book is a bit like surfing," he said. "Most of the time you're waiting. And it's quite pleasant, sitting in the water waiting. But you are expecting that the result of a storm over the horizon, in another time zone, usually, days old, will radiate out in the form of waves. And eventually, when they show up, you turn around and ride that energy to the shore. It's a lovely thing, feeling that momentum. If you're lucky, it's also about grace. As a writer, you roll up to the desk every day, and then you sit there, waiting, in the hope that something will come over the horizon. And then you turn around and ride it, in the form of a story.”
― Tim Winton
“Actually, writers have no business writing about their own works. They either wax conceited, saying things like: 'My brilliance is possibly most apparent in my dazzling short story, "The Cookiepants Hypotenuse."' Or else they get unbearably cutesy: 'My cat Ootsywootums has given me all my best ideas, hasn't oo, squeezums?”
― Connie Willis, The Winds of Marble Arch and Other Stories
“Writing is hard work. A clear sentence is no accident. Very few sentences come out right the first time, or even the third time. Remember this in moments of despair. If you find that writing is hard, it’s because it is hard.”
― William Knowlton Zinsser, On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction
The piece of advice we writers often hear is this: Write What You Know. It is good advice. Until it’s not. This is true of all of the so-called “sacred cows” of writing advice—from Kill Your Darlings to Never Open Your Story With Weather to Don’t Use Adverbs Because Adverbs Eat Babies. They’re a good place to start but not always a great place to finish. They work well as guidelines, but far less as rigorous authorial gospel. If we give Write What You Know (aka WWYK) too much authority—too much weight as a supposed rule—we run the very likely risk of never actually writing anything interesting, because what we “know” as writers is often quite limited. Many of us write in the genre space, from science fiction to fantasy to horror, and we are automatically walled away from those genres if we interpret WWYK too literally. I’ve never ridden a dragon, henceforth, I should never write about riding a dragon. I’m not a robot from the future sent to kill the mother of the leader of a future human resistance movement, so how the hell could I write about it? Chased by a masked killer holding a bloodthirsty machete through the woods? Thankfully, no. So I guess I can’t write about it? The only thing I can write about is … Being a writer? Or worse, being a writer who is writing about writing? Ye gods, what a thrilling novel that would be. PAGE ONE: THE WRITER WRITES. Scribble, scribble. PAGE 300: THE WRITER IS ABOUT TO FINISH HIS MASTERPIECE ON THE SUBJECT OF A WRITER WRITING. It’s writers writing about writing all the way down. Ugggh.
-Chuck Wendig, (Forward) Putting the Science in Fiction
“Why does the writer write? The writer writes to serve — hopelessly he writes in the hope that he might serve — not himself and not others, but that great cold elemental grace which knows us.
A writer I very much admire is Don DeLillo. At an awards ceremony for him at the Folger Library several years ago, I said that he was like a great shark moving hidden in our midst, beneath the din and wreck of the moment, at apocalyptic ease in the very elements of our psyche and times that are most troublesome to us, that we most fear.
Why do I write? Because I wanna be a great shark too. Another shark. A different shark, in a different part of the ocean. The ocean is vast.”
― Joy Williams
808 Short Story
“Behind the newspaper Julian was withdrawing into the inner compartment of his mind where he spent most of his time. This was a kind of mental bubble in which he established himself when he could not bear to be a part of what was going on around him. From it he could see out and judge but in it he was safe from any kind of penetration from without. It was the only place where he felt free of the general idiocy of his fellows. His mother had never entered it but from it he could see her with absolute clarity.”
― Flannery O'Connor, Everything That Rises Must Converge: Stories
“I'm going to marry my novels and have little short stories for children.”
― Jack Kerouac
“A short story is a different thing altogether – a short story is like a quick kiss in the dark from a stranger.”
― Stephen King, Skeleton Crew
“A short story is a love affair; a novel is a marriage. A short story is a photograph; a novel is a film.”
― Lorrie Moore
One dollar and eighty-seven cents. That was all. And sixty cents of it was in pennies. Pennies saved one and two at a time by bulldozing the grocer and the vegetable man and the butcher until one's cheeks burned with the silent imputation of parsimony that such close dealing implied. Three times Della counted it. One dollar and eighty- seven cents. And the next day would be Christmas.
-O Henry, The Gift Of The Magi
810 American literature in English
“In the four corners of the globe, who reads an American book?” The question came in an essay in the Edinburgh Review in 1820 from the writer and clergyman Sydney Smith.
Who, in the four corners of the earth, reads an American book? Tout le monde, as our French friends would say. All the world. But most importantly, we do. Americans. We’re the most important who.. Our literature travels well and widely. Mark Twain behind the old Iron Curtain. Robert Frost in the British Isles. Hemingway and Steinbeck pretty much everywhere. It also continues to talk to us at home. It has something to offer the world, even more to offer its primary audience.
By 1820, books, plays, and paintings, to say nothing of musical compositions, scientific discoveries, and works of moral philosophy, were not exactly thick on Yankee ground. To which, one must counter with a mature and reasoned response. So what? Hey, we had more pressing issues to attend to, such as not starving to death, clearing forests, subduing natives, carving a republic out of bits of contemporary philosophy and very mixed feelings about human nature, building cities and villages out of thin air, embracing the concept of liberty while enslaving fellow humans. Not all pressing issues, clearly, are created equal. Creating literature is a leisure activity, rarely undertaken by those for whom food and shelter are at issue.
Thomas C. Foster, Twenty-five Books That Shaped America (2011)
Although they are often caricatured as middle-aged, tea-drinking spinster librarians who knit sweaters and keep cats, Janeites are in some ways a rather diverse bunch. A 2008 survey of forty- five hundred Austen fans found an air traffic controller, a zookeeper, and a Dominican friar among the ranks, as well as a fair number of teachers and, yes, librarians. The vast majority of survey respondents were female—though presumably not the Dominican friar—and most were also college-educated, with ages ranged across the spectrum. (Respondents weren’t asked about their race or ethnicity, but at the JASNA events I’ve attended, most of the participants have been white.) Despite these commonalities of gender, educational attainment, and perhaps racial background, the survey results showed what any attendee at a JASNA conference already knew: Janeites are college students and grandparents, evangelical Christians and secular feminists, academics who condescend to bonnet-wearing enthusiasts and unabashed swooners who love ogling Colin Firth in a wet shirt at least as much as they love rereading Pride and Prejudice. What all these diverse enthusiasts share is a quality of engagement with Austen and her works that goes beyond mere admiration. For as long as Austen fans have been called Janeites, the word has signified more than a simple fondness for the six great novels. A Janeite is someone who feels an intensely personal affection for the writer and her books. Janeites love Austen’s novels, but they also feel close to the author herself, whom they often call “Jane,” as if she were a neighbor whose kitchen door they could knock on to borrow a cup of sugar.
Deborah Yaffe, Among the Janeites: A Journey Through the World of Jane Austen Fandom (2013)
811 Poetry
I have no sword, I have no plow;I guess that makes me idle now.
There is no fishing net I own
I have no pastures in which to roam.
I have no vineyard in the sun.
I have no work I must get done.
I will soon have a college degree
But that does not give a job to me.
-Kristin Wilson, IDLE AND EDUCATED
“Because philosophy arises from awe, a philosopher is bound in his way to be a lover of myths and poetic fables. Poets and philosophers are alike in being big with wonder.”
― St. Thomas Aquinas
“A poet is a painter in his way, he draws to the life, but in another kind; we draw the nobler part, the soul and the mind; the pictures of the pen shall outlast those of the pencil, and even worlds themselves.”
― Aphra Behn, Oroonoko
“Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.”
― G.K. Chesterton, Alarms and Discursions
“The trouble with poetry is
that it encourages the writing of more poetry...”
― Billy Collins, The Trouble With Poetry - And Other Poems
“Deep in the meadow, hidden far away
A cloak of leaves, a moonbeam ray
Forget your woes and let your troubles lay
And when it's morning again, they'll wash away
Here it's safe, here it's warm
Here the daisies guard you from every harm
Here your dreams are sweet and tomorrow brings them true
Here is the place where I love you.”
― Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games
“I opened a book and in I strode.
Now nobody can find me.
I've left my chair, my house, my road,
My town and my world behind me.
I'm wearing the cloak, I've slipped on the ring,
I've swallowed the magic potion.
I've fought with a dragon, dined with a king
And dived in a bottomless ocean.
― Julia Donaldson
“Whereas story is processed in the mind in a straightforward manner, poetry bypasses rational thought and goes straight to the limbic system and lights it up like a brushfire. It's the crack cocaine of the literary world.”
― Jasper Fforde, First Among Sequels
“She moved like a poem and smiled like a sphinx.”
― Laini Taylor, Daughter of Smoke & Bone
“We have big, beautiful brains. We invent things that fly. Fly. We write poetry. You probably hate poetry, but it’s hard to argue with ‘Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate’ in terms of sheer beauty. We are capable of big lives. A big history. Why settle? Why choose the practical thing, the mundane thing? We are born to dream and make the things we dream about.”
― Nicola Yoon, The Sun is Also a Star
“Do a loony-goony dance
'Cross the kitchen floor,
Put something silly in the world
That ain't been there before.”
― Shel Silverstein, A Light in the Attic
“A good poem is a contribution to reality. The world is never the same once a good poem has been added to it. A good poem helps to change the shape of the universe, helps to extend everyone's knowledge of himself and the world around him.”
― Dylan Thomas
812 American drama in English
Plays:
Ralph: They’ve found us!
May: Who? Who's found you?
Ralph: The time travelling Nazis.
May: Hang on? There are time travelling Nazis?
Ralph: Yes!
May: That’s not good.
-Claire Demmer, A SNITCH IN TIME: a time travelling comedy adventure: http://offthewallplays.com
“How you can sit there, calmly eating muffins when we are in this horrible trouble, I can’t make out. You seem to me to be perfectly heartless."
"Well, I can’t eat muffins in an agitated manner. The butter would probably get on my cuffs. One should always eat muffins quite calmly. It is the only way to eat them."
"I say it’s perfectly heartless your eating muffins at all, under the circumstances.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest
“Y'know — Babylon once had two million people in it, and all we know about 'em is the names of the kings and some copies of wheat contracts . . . and contracts for the sale of slaves. Yet every night all those families sat down to supper, and the father came home from his work, and the smoke went up the chimney,— same as here. And even in Greece and Rome, all we know about the real life of the people is what we can piece together out of the joking poems and the comedies they wrote for the theatre back then.
So I'm going to have a copy of this play put in the cornerstone and the people a thousand years from now'll know a few simple facts about us — more than the Treaty of Versailles and the Lind-bergh flight.
See what I mean?
So — people a thousand years from now — this is the way we were in the provinces north of New York at the beginning of the twentieth century. — This is the way we were: in our growing up and in our marrying and in our living and in our dying.
Said by the Stage Manager”
― Thornton Wilder, Our Town
“Don't you just love those long rainy afternoons in New Orleans when an hour isn't just an hour - but a little piece of eternity dropped into your hands - and who knows what to do with it?”
― Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire
813 American fiction in English
The novel was frequently a proselytizing tool, but not always for religious ends. In the 1850s, a reviewer for Philadelphia’s Graham’s Magazine, intending merely to comment on the ubiquity and variety of the novel, revealed the contemporary assumption that most novels had such a purpose. He wrote that there are “political novels, representing every variety of political opinion—religious novels, to push the doctrines of every religious sect—philanthropic novels, devoted to the championship of every reform—socialist novels … philosophical novels, metaphysical novels, even railway novels [that is, those suited, in topic or length, to be read as one rode the rails].” In the same decade, a reviewer in Putnam’s Monthly Magazine wrote, “Novels are one of the features of our age … we would not know what we would do without them.”
Philip F. Gura, Truth's Ragged Edge(2013)
814 Essays:
“I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge. That myth is more potent than history. That dreams are more powerful than facts. That hope always triumphs over experience. That laughter is the only cure for grief. And I believe that love is stronger than death.”― Robert Fulghum, All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten: Uncommon Thoughts On Common Things
“I’m the kind of person who likes to be by himself. To put a finer point on it, I’m the type of person who doesn’t find it painful to be alone. I find spending an hour or two every day running alone, not speaking to anyone, as well as four or five hours alone at my desk, to be neither difficult nor boring. I’ve had this tendency ever since I was young, when, given a choice, I much preferred reading books on my own or concentrating on listening to music over being with someone else. I could always think of things to do by myself.”
― Haruki Murakami, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running
815 American speeches in English
OK: YOU HAVE BEEN TOLD TO FOLLOW YOUR DREAMS. BUT - WHAT IF IT'S A STUPID DREAM? FOR INSTANCE STEPHEN COLBERT OF 25 YEARS AGO LIVED AT 2015 NORTH RIDGE - WITH TWO MEN AND THREE WOMEN - IN WHAT I NOW KNOW WAS A BROTHEL. HE DREAMED OF LIVING ALONE - WELL, ALONE WITH HIS BEARD - IN A LARGE, BARREN LOFT APARTMENT - LOTS OF BLOND WOOD- WEARING A KIMONO, WITH A FUTON ON THE FLOOR, AND A SAMOVAR OF TEA CONSTANTLY BUBBLING IN THE BACKGROUND, DOING SHAKESPEARE IN THE STREET FOR THE HOMELESS. TODAY, I AM A BEARDLESS, SUBURBAN DAD WHO LIVES IN A HOUSE, WEARS NO-IRON KHAKIS, AND MAKES ANTHONY WIENER JOKES FOR A LIVING. AND I LOVE IT. BECAUSE THANKFULLY DREAMS CAN CHANGE. IF WE'D ALL STUCK WITH OUR FIRST DREAM, THE WORLD WOULD BE OVERRUN WITH COWBOYS AND PRINCESSES.
SO WHATEVER YOUR DREAM IS RIGHT NOW, IF YOU DON'T ACHIEVE IT, YOU HAVEN'T FAILED, AND YOU'RE NOT SOME LOSER. BUT JUST AS IMPORTANTLY -AND THIS IS THE PART I MAY NOT GET RIGHT AND YOU MAY NOT LISTEN TO - IF YOU DO GET YOUR DREAM, YOU ARE NOT A WINNER.
AFTER I GRADUATED FROM HERE, I MOVED DOWN TO CHICAGO AND DID IMPROV. NOW THERE ARE VERY FEW RULES TO IMPROVISATION, BUT ONE OF THE THINGS I WAS TAUGHT EARLY ON IS THAT YOU ARE NOT THE MOST IMPORTANT PERSON IN THE SCENE. EVERYBODY ELSE IS. AND IF THEY ARE THE MOST IMPORTANT PEOPLE IN THE SCENE, YOU WILL NATURALLY PAY ATTENTION TO THEM AND SERVE THEM. BUT THE GOOD NEWS IS YOU'RE IN THE SCENE TOO. SO HOPEFULLY TO THEM YOU'RE THE MOST IMPORTANT PERSON, AND THEY WILL SERVE YOU. NO ONE IS LEADING, YOU'RE ALL FOLLOWING THE FOLLOWER, SERVING THE SERVANT. YOU CANNOT WIN IMPROV.
AND LIFE IS AN IMPROVISATION. YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT'S GOING TO HAPPEN NEXT AND YOU ARE MOSTLY JUST MAKING THINGS UP AS YOU GO ALONG.
AND LIKE IMPROV, YOU CANNOT WIN YOUR LIFE.
Colbert's Commencement Address June 17, 2011 Northwestern
816 American letters in English
Customer Service Dept.
GOOD COOK DINNER FORK CO.
BRADSHAW INTERNATIONAL, INC
9303 Greenleaf Ave Santa Fe Springs, CA 90670
Dear Customer Service Dept.,
I just want to tell you how happy I am with my fork. I use it all the time. In this world of people not giving others credit I just want to say that the Good Cook Dinner Fork company makes a very good fork. Maybe the best fork I have ever used! Certainly, better than my spoon.
I use your fork on the following: mashed potatoes, melon chunks, cranberry roll, beets, corn, lettuce, cake. Please let me know that the people who made my fork were thanked. They deserve more than just looking at forks all day. Let them know others are out there and they care!!! Thank you.
I look forward to hearing from you soon. In the meantime I will continue to use my fork on the following: Sandwich meat, pie, pineapple, imitation crab, yams, rice, gumbo. Will you be coming out with any new fork designs soon? I like my fork, but I want to be up to date on the fork designs. Will there be more prongs? I am satisfied with the number of prongs I have now, but you never know.
Thanks for thanking the fork makers for me and writing me back and telling me they were thanked.
Thanks.
Best Wishes,
Ted L. Nancy
-Ted L Nancy, More Letters from a Nut
Letters:
My dear Wormwood,
"To us a human is primarily food; our aim is the absorption of its will into ours, the increase of our own area of selfhood at its expense. But the obedience which the Enemy demands of men is quite a different thing. One must face the fact that all the talk about His love for men, and His service being perfect freedom, is not (as one would gladly believe) mere propaganda, but an appalling truth. He really does want to fill the universe with a lot of loathsome little replicas of Himself—creatures whose life, on its miniature scale, will be qualitatively like His own, not because He has absorbed them but because their wills freely conform to His. We want cattle who can finally become food; He wants servants who can finally become sons. We want to suck in, He wants to give out. We are empty and would be filled; He is full and flows over. Our war aim is a world in which Our Father Below has drawn all other beings into himself: the Enemy wants a world full of beings united to Him but still distinct.
Your affectionate uncle SCREWTAPE
— C.S. Lewis (The Screwtape Letters)
817Humor
Writing Humor and being Funny
When you get pulled into a good piece of humor writing, something magical happens. The string of words in front of you ignites a spark that sends outlandish images and funny ideas racing into your brain like a lit fuse, culminating in an explosion of laughter.
Scott Dikkers, How to Write Funny: Your Serious, Step-By-Step Blueprint For Creating Incredibly, Irresistibly, Successfully Hilarious Writing (How to Write Funny Book 1)
Whenever ѕоmеоnе аrоund you tеllѕ a funnу ѕtоrу, cracks a joke оr ѕhаrеѕ a humоrоuѕ еxреrіеnсе, look bеуоnd the lаughtеr аnd spot thе intricacies of whаt іt took fоr thеm to mаkе еvеrуоnе lаugh. Frоm bоdу language tо voice tоnе pick uр tірѕ on how ѕоmеоnе was аblе tо sustain humor іn a соnvеrѕаtіоn. Create a рооl оf lеаrnіng, еxреrіеnсеѕ, аnd ѕlісеѕ of life аѕ you mееt and іntеrасt wіth dіffеrеnt сhаrасtеrѕ. Drаw іnѕріrаtіоn from their funnу ѕіdе and іnсоrроrаtе bіtѕ оf іt іntо your bеhаvіоr tо showcase your sense оf humоr in its full glory.
Laughing at уоurѕеlf wіll аrm уоu with the ability tо dесірhеr bеtwееn thіngѕ thаt аrе funnу аnd thе thіngѕ thаt аrе dull аnd bоrіng. It wіll аlѕо hеlр you drаw the lіnе bеtwееn bеіng sarcastically funny аnd ѕоundіng rudе.
Crеаtіng original humоr іѕ mоrе аbоut picking up іnсіdеntѕ from everyday lіfе and gіvіng thеm a соmіс twіѕt. In mundаnе еvеrуdау ѕіtuаtіоnѕ, humоr mау nоt lіе еxрlісіtlу оn the surface. But іtѕ true value іѕ showcased whеn ѕоmеоnе has thе sense аnd undеrѕtаndіng tо роіnt іt out.
-Francis Harrison, How To Be Funny: Releasing Your Inner Comedian and Improving Your Sense of Humor
One day a donkey fell into a well. The farmer couldn't get him out, so he knew he had to cover him up. He called in his neighbors, and they all started to throw dirt down the well, but instead of burying the animal, the donkey would shake the dirt off and take a step up. Pretty soon, the pile of dirt got so high that the donkey stepped over the edge of the well. Moralists use this story to preach that all our troubles can be stepping stones, that we shouldn't give up; instead shake it off and take a step up. Comedians, however, note that as soon as the disdained donkey got to the top he ran over and bit the farmer. Their moral is that if something goes wrong, try to cover your ass. It can come back and bite you.
-Mel Helitzer, Comedy Writing Secrets
Our plan, simply put, merges the best of both worlds, a mash-up of science
and comedy—two topics that don’t always get along. We’ll apply cutting-edge research techniques to the wide world of humor while subjecting the zingers, wisecracks, and punch lines we’ve all taken for granted to hard-and-fast analysis back in the lab. Along the way, we aim to answer tough questions that are bound to turn heads of scientists and comedians alike: Do comics need to come from screwed-up childhoods? What’s the secret to winning the New Yorker cartoon caption contest? Why does being funny make you more attractive? Who’s got a bigger funny bone—men or women, Democrats or Republicans? What is, quantifiably, the funniest joke in the world? Is laughter really the best medicine? Can a joke ruin your life—or lead to revolution? And, most important of all, do the French love Jerry Lewis?
-Peter McGraw, The Humor Code: A Global Search for What Makes Things Funny
This book contains conversations with 21 top humor writers. If you’re wondering what constitutes a “top” humor writer, I would say an impressive résumé, deep respect from peers within the industry, and a willingness to sit still for five to fifteen hours over a period of two to three days—usually on the phone, or in front of the computer, or in the back of a coffee shop—to answer question after question, in greater and greater detail, from a total stranger. And always for no payment. (Please keep in mind that if you cannot find your favorite writer[s] in this book, perhaps he or she had “better things to be doing,” such as “spending time with family” or “earning a living.” Those are actual excuses that I was given, and, I have to admit, pretty good ones.)
-Mike Sacks, And Here's the Kicker: Conversations with 21 Top Humor Writers--The New Unexpurgated Version!
Humor Writing
“You know," said Arthur, "it's at times like this, when I'm trapped in a Vogon airlock with a man from Betelgeuse, and about to die of asphyxiation in deep space that I really wish I'd listened to what my mother told me when I was young."
"Why, what did she tell you?"
"I don't know, I didn't listen.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
AS A PROFESSIONAL HUMORIST,
If you want to develop a sense of humor of your own, you need to learn some jokes. Notice I do not say “puns.” Puns are little “plays on words” that a certain breed of person loves to spring on you and then look at you in a certain self-satisfied way to indicate that he thinks that you must think that he is by far the cleverest person on Earth now that Benjamin Franklin is dead, when in fact what you are thinking is that if this person ever ends up in a lifeboat, the other passengers will hurl him overboard by the end of the first day even if they have plenty of food and water.
-Dave Barry, Dave Barry's Greatest Hits
“It's wildly irritating to have invented something as revolutionary as sarcasm, only to have it abused by amateurs.”
― Christopher Moore, Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal
Too many people spend money they haven't earned to buy things they don't want to impress people they don't like.
-Will Rogers
819 No longer used—formerly Puzzle activities
Author Mark Twain (1835–1910) had this take on riddles (both of the puzzling and the philosophical variety): “Let us consider that we are all partially insane. It will explain us to each other; it will unriddle many riddles; it will make clear and simple many things which are involved in haunting and harassing difficulties and obscurities now.”
The Alzheimer’s Association in the United States has endorsed sudoku as a preventive therapy against the disease. Their recommendation is based on published studies. Other puzzle genres such as crosswords and jigsaw puzzles are also recommended. In other words, puzzles may indeed be therapy for the aging brain.
The word “puzzle” was first documented in a book titled The Voyage of Robert Dudley to the West Indies, 1594–1595 (1899) by Sir George F. Warner (1845–1936). It marked the first time the word
Marcel Danesi Ph.D, The 125 Best Brain Teasers of All Time: A Mind-Blowing Challenge of Math, Logic, and Wordplay (2018)
822 Shakespeare
“There is no greater mistake in life than seeing things or hearing them at the wrong time. Shakespeare is ruined for most people by having been made to learn it at school; you should see Shakespeare as it was written to be seen, played on the stage. There you can appreciate it quite young, long before you take in the beauty of the words and of the poetry.”― Agatha Christie, Agatha Christie: An Autobiography
"Shakespeare is the happy hunting ground of all minds that have lost their balance."
-James Joyce, Ulysses
Brush up your Shakespeare
Start quoting him now
Brush up your Shakespeare
And the women you will wow
- Cole Porter
Actual Shakespeare:
“All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages.”
― William Shakespeare, As You Like It
“There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
― William Shakespeare, Hamlet
“Lovers and madmen have such seething brains,
Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend
More than cool reason ever comprehends.
The lunatic, the lover and the poet
Are of imagination all compact:
One sees more devils than vast hell can hold,
That is, the madman: the lover, all as frantic,
Sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt:
The poet's eye, in fine frenzy rolling,
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;
And as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen
Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.”
― William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream
Inspired Shakespeare:
“You've never heard of the Trickster King?" Puck asked, shocked.
The girls shook their heads.
"The Prince of Fairies? Robin Goodfellow? The Imp?"
"Do you work for Santa?" Daphne asked.
"I'm a fairy, not an elf!" Puck roared. "You really don't know who I am! Doesn't anyone read the classics anymore? Dozens of writers have warned about me. I'm in the most famous of all of William Shakespeare's plays."
"I don't remember any Puck in Romeo and Juliet," Sabrina muttered, feeling a little amused at how the boy was reacting to his non-celebrity.
"Besides Romeo and Juliet!" Puck shouted. "I'm the star of a Midsummer Night's Dream!"
"Congratulation," Sabrina said flatly. "Never read it.”
― Michael Buckley, The Fairy-Tale Detectives
“- Be thou not technical with me,/Or else thine input valve may swift receive/a hearty helping of my golden foot.”
― Ian Doescher, William Shakespeare's Star Wars: Verily, A New Hope
“I know that David Tennant's Hamlet isn't till July. And lots of people are going to be doing Dr Who in Hamlet jokes, so this is just me getting it out of the way early, to avoid the rush...
"To be, or not to be, that is the question. Weeelll.... More of A question really. Not THE question. Because, well, I mean, there are billions and billions of questions out there, and well, when I say billions, I mean, when you add in the answers, not just the questions, weeelll, you're looking at numbers that are positively astronomical and... for that matter the other question is what you lot are doing on this planet in the first place, and er, did anyone try just pushing this little red button?”
― Neil Gaiman
“A tragedy is a tragedy, and at the bottom, all tragedies are stupid. Give me a choice and I'll take A Midsummer Night's Dream over Hamlet every time. Any fool with steady hands and a working set of lungs can build up a house of cards and then blow it down, but it takes a genius to make people laugh.”
― Stephen King
“If Romeo had never met Juliet, maybe they both would have still been alive, but what they would have been alive for is the question Shakespeare wants us to answer.”
― Gary D. Schmidt, The Wednesday Wars
Though Shakespeare is real, he is also elusive, defying our efforts to define him. Try as we might to pin him down, he always seems to get away. We don’t even know for certain what he looked like. The various paintings claiming to be portraits of him are most probably of someone else. In some ways the quest for the real Shakespeare can be likened to the quest for the Holy Grail.
-Joseph Pearce, Quest For Shakespeare
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