John Gardner (British writer) quote: He must shape simultaneously (in an expanding creative moment) his characters, plot, and setting, each inextricably connected to the others; ...

He must shape simultaneously (in an expanding creative moment) his characters, plot, and setting, each inextricably connected to the others; he must make his whole world in a single, coherent gesture, as a potter makes a pot...

~ John Gardner (British writer) ~

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He must shape simultaneously (in an expanding creative moment) his characters, plot, and setting, ea...

John Gardner (British writer)The Art of Fiction: Notes on Craft for Young Writers

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The true artist plays mad with his soul, labors at the very lip of the volcano, but remembers and clings to his purpose, which is as strong as the dre...

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Real suspense comes with moral dilemma and the courage to make and act upon choices. False suspense comes from the accidental and meaningless occurren...

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People will tell you that writing is too difficult, that it's impossible to get your work published, that you might as well hang yourself. Meanwhile, ...

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The point is, whether or not they show it at dinner parties, writers learn, by a necessity of their trade, to be the sharpest of observers.

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We slip into a dream, forgetting the room we're sitting in, forgetting it's lunchtime or time to go to work. We recreate, with minor and for the most ...

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Like other kinds of intelligence, the storyteller's is partlynatural, partly trained. It is composed of several qualities, mostof which, in normal peo...

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Because his art is sucha difficult one, the writer is not likely to advance in the worldas visibly as do his neighbors: while his best friends from hi...

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As every writer knows... there is something mysterious about the writer's ability, on any given day, to write. When the juices are flowing, or the wri...

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The best way in the world for breaking up a writer's block is to write a lot.

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When a writer first begins to write, he or she feels the samefirst thrill of achievement that the young gambler or oboeplayer feels: winning a little,...

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The best way a writer can find to keep himself going is to live off his (or her) spouse. The trouble is that, psychologically at least, it’s hard. Our...

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Theoretically there's no reason one should get [writer's block], if one understands that writing, after all, is only writing, neither something one ou...

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The very qualities that make one a writer in the first place contribute to the block: hypersensitivity, stubbornness, insatiability, and so on. Given ...

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The writer's characters must stand before us with a wonderful clarity, such continuous clarity that nothing they do strikes us as improbable behavior ...

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The instruction here is not for every kind of writer - not for the writer of nurse books or thrillers or porno or the cheaper sort of sci-fi - though ...