Diana-gabaldon Quotes

Conflict and character are the heart of good fiction, and good mystery has both of those in spades.

But it wouldn’t have half the power of a story in which Jamie and Claire truly conquer real evil and...

You don’t need to know the purpose as you write, but when you read over something you’ve written, yo...

Dialogue doesn’t take place in a vacuum. Dialogue is contradictory, in that it can either speed up o...

You want to anchor the scene with physical details, but by and large it’s better to use sensual deta...

Okay. This has to be a credible threat. Ergo, we have to have seen (and heard about) the real damage...

Pointing out the emotion in a scene is like laughing at your own jokes.

Watch a good movie sometime without reference to what’s happening but only with attention to how it ...

Don’t let characters talk pointlessly—they only talk if there’s something to say.

As a rule of thumb, four consecutive lines of dialogue is about as much as you want to have without ...

Don’t go overboard in avoiding “said.” Basically, “said” is the default for dialogue, and a good thi...

To some extent, emotions are universal and can be treated that way; no matter what the participants’...

If you can’t look a line of dialogue in the face and say exactly why it’s there—take it out or chang...

Just as an effective advertisement or page layout includes a lot of white space, a powerful scene re...

Almost everybody understands that you have to have something at stake for a story to be good.

Good sex scene is about the exchange of emotions, not bodily fluids

Men have external genitalia, while women have internal genitalia. This simple difference makes a lot...

For a different woman, a different relationship, a different situation, gentleness might have been t...

One of the general patterns of good (i.e., striking and memorable) writing is the effect of repetiti...

There’s a little trick called the Rule of Three: if you use any three of the five senses, it will ma...

Jamie’s viewpoint is expressed almost entirely in metaphor: If she was broken, she would slash him w...

If there’s true emotional content in a situation between characters, all you do is reveal it.

#Outlander QOTD Claire and Master Raymond.Snapped abruptly to a realization of how rudely I had been...

Snapped abruptly to a realization of how rudely I had been staring, I blushed and said without think...

It would ha' been a good deal easier, if ye'd only been a witch.