“Not long ago I made a list of Doc Ford books I would like to do, and I came up with 11 pretty easily. I like to let the characters go their own ways and see what happens. I find them fascinating.”
~Randy Wayne White
voice
✒️ Writers’ Wisdom ~ Get Personal with your Characters
“If you cant laugh at your own characters, or shed a tear for them, or even get angry at one of them, no one else will either.”
~ Johanna Lindsey
✒️ Writers’ Wisdom ~ It’s the Dance
My job as the writer is to fool you. Your job as the reader is to see if you can catch me at it. ~ Sue Grafton
✒️ Writers’ Wisdom ~ It Doesn’t All Happen at Once
I began wanting to create a detective who really turned the tables on that image of women, to know that you could have a sex life and not be a bad person. You could have a sex life and still solve your own problems. It was eight years from when I started having the fantasy that I was going to create such a detective to when I actually sat down and came up with V. I. Warshawski. It was a long, slow journey to come to a writing voice and do that character. ~ Sara Paretsky
✒️ Writers’ Wisdom ~ Write About What You’ve Already Experienced
“I try to write about things, places, events, and phenomena I know about personally. That helps make the novels more genuine.”
~ Lincoln Child
✒️ Writers’ Wisdom ~ A Strategy for Story Writing
“When I write I pretend I’m telling a story to someone in the room and I don’t want them to get up until I’m finished.”
~ James Patterson
✒️ Writers’ Wisdom ~ Creating a Character
“When you’re building a character, or at least when I’m building a character, you start saying, ‘How am I going to make people like him?'” ~ John Sanford
✒️ Writers’ Wisdom ~ Schedule Writing Time
“I needed to find my way to write. I need about six hours of uninterrupted time in order to produce about two hours of writing, and when I accepted that and found the way to do it, then I was able to write.”
~ Robert B. Parkter
✒️ Writers’ Wisdom ~ Nothing to Lose
“One thing that helps is to give myself permission to write badly. I tell myself that I’m going to do my five or 10 pages no matter what, and that I can always tear them up the following morning if I want. I’ll have lost nothing-writing and tearing up five pages would leave me no further behind than if I took the day off.” ~ Lawrence Block
✒️ Writers’ Wisdom ~ Writer’s Block, Finding the Door
“I know people who have suffered writer’s block, and I don’t think I’ve ever had it. A friend of mine, for three years he couldn’t write. And he said that he thought of stories and he knew the stories, could see the stories completely, but he could never find the door. Somehow that first sentence was never there. And without the door, he couldn’t do the story. I’ve never experienced that. But it’s a chilling thought.”
~ Donald E. Westlake
