Stop trying to write sentences and start trying to write stories. ~ James Patterson
I plot as I go. Many novelists write an outline that has almost as many pages as their ultimate book. Others knock out a brief synopsis… Do what is comfortable. If you have to plot out every move your characters make, so be it. Just make sure there is a plausible purpose behind their machinations. A good reader can smell a phony plot a block away. ~ Clive Cussler
We writers, as we work our way deeper into our craft, learn to drop more and more personal clues. Like burglars who secretly wish to be caught, we leave our fingerprints on broken locks, our voiceprints in bugged rooms, our footprints in the wet concrete.
~ Ross MacDonald
The way to write a thriller is to ask a question at the beginning, and answer it at the end. ~ Lee Child
Those 4 guys in the late 60’s who attacked a jewel merchant on New York’s West 46th St. on the sidewalk, so they could steal his jewel-filled station wagon, which they abandoned 2 blocks later because none of them could drive a stick shift. Where would I be without such people? ~ Donald Westlake
My books are primarily plot driven but the best plot in the world is useless if you don’t populate them with characters that readers can care about. ~ Jeffrey Deaver
The less attention I pay to what people want and the more attention I pay to just writing the book I want to write, the better I do. ~ Lawrence Block
Depending on what I’m working on, I come to the writing desk with entirely different mindsets. When I change form one to the other, it’s as if another writer is on the scene. ~ Ed McBain
“My first rule was given to me by TH White, author of The Sword in the Stone and other Arthurian fantasies and was: Read. Read everything you can lay hands on. I always advise people who want to write a fantasy or science fiction or romance to stop reading everything in those genres and start reading everything else from Bunyan to Byatt.” — Michael Moorcock
One day a long time from now you’ll cease to care anymore whom you please or what anybody has to say about you. That’s when you’ll finally produce the work you’re capable of. ~ J. D. Salinger
