A great novel is the record of how a character fights with death.
A quirky, colorful character overstays her welcome after a few chapters, unless trouble comes calling.
At this point in the story, the character looks at himself. He takes stock of where he is in the conflict and––depending on the type of story––has either of two basic thoughts. In a character-driven s...
Don't give up. I don't think any other advice works. Writing is one of those things where you just have to do it. There will be far more people to discourage you than to encourage you. The time never...
Don’t you love that? One of the greatest scientific innovations of all time just came to Townes as he was sitting on a bench in a park. And then he starts scratching it out on paper.
Drive thy business or it will drive thee. – Benjamin Franklin
Dwight Swain, the great writing teacher, once said that the secret of excitement is to go deeper into your characters. Create more backstory, more secrets, more complexity, and you'll get excited agai...
Ernest Hemingway had a rather personal way to describe first drafts. To paraphrase, he said all of them are like, ahem, biological waste.
Someone with less talent who works hard often outperforms the gifted.
Give yourself permission to be bad. Write first, polish later.
Good writers are good readers.
Grief was not a stream. It was an ocean.
I was in the house alone. That's usually the case because I'm writing and my wife is out in the real world doing something of great value and being with actual people. People who are not tied down to...
If you up your skill and take more chances, your odds of success increase.
In fact, one could argue that the skill of the fiction writer boils down to the ability to exploit intensity.
It’s quite interesting to note that Townes’s colleagues at Columbia were skeptical of his idea. Niels Bohr, one of the great quantum physicists, and Nobel laureate Isadore Rabi, head of the university...
God created the world in six days. On the seventh day, he rested. On the eighth day, he started getting complaints. And it hasn't stopped since.
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