\u201cEveryone\u2019s a critic.\u201d Never was there a truer statement when it comes to fiction writing.<\/p>\n
But the creative community has plenty of constructive advice to give, too. Whether you\u2019re working on your first manuscript, a piece of flash fiction, or your tenth novel, here are some words of wisdom to help take your creative fiction writing to the next level!<\/p>\n
\u201cThe trouble with writing fiction is that it has to make sense, whereas real life doesn’t.\u201d
\n\u2015\u00a0Iain M. Banks<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\u201cWhen well told, a story captured the subtle movement of change. If a novel was a map of a country, a story was the bright silver pin that marked the crossroads.\u201d
\n\u2015\u00a0Ann Patchett<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\u201cYou take people, you put them on a journey, you give them peril, you find out who they really are.\u201d
\n\u2015\u00a0Joss Whedon<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\u201cIn everything that can be called art there is a quality of redemption. It may be pure tragedy, if it is high tragedy, and it may be pity and irony, and it may be the raucous laughter of the strong man. But down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid\u2026 The story is the man’s adventure in search of a hidden truth, and it would be no adventure if it did not happen to a man fit for adventure. He has a range of awareness that startles you, but it belongs to him by right, because it belongs to the world he lives in. If there were enough like him, the world would be a very safe place to live in, without becoming too dull to be worth living in.\u201d
\n\u2015\u00a0Raymond Chandler,\u00a0The Simple Art of Murder<\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/p>\n
\u201cThe vital power of an imaginative work demands a diversity within its unity; and the stronger the diversity the more massive the unity.\u201d
\n\u2015\u00a0D.L. Sayers<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/p>\n
\u201cFueled by my inspiration, I ran across the room to steal the cup of coffee the bookshelf had taken prisoner. Lapping the black watery brew like a hyena, I tossed the empty cup aside. I then returned to the chair to continue my divine act of creation. Hot blood swished in my head as my mighty pen stole across the page.\u201d
\n\u2015\u00a0Roman Payne,\u00a0Rooftop Soliloquy<\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\u201cWriting fiction feels like an adventurous act, nudging aside reality a word at a time.\u201d
\n\u2015\u00a0James Van Pelt<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/p>\n
\u201cI can\u2019t imagine anything more shallow or unsatisfying than the cult of realism in fiction that all one wants to do is to write about surfaces and words that people say, the looks on people\u2019s faces, the clothes they\u2019re wearing. When I think of the word fiction I think of someone at a desk, grappling with what are largely unseen, what I call the invisible world or the world of the mind. Fiction starts and for me never gets away from the realm of the mind and even when I read I can never forget that what I am reading is the product of a human hand and that behind what I\u2019m reading is a human voice and I hear that voice in the sentences and phrases I read and being a curious human being I visualize, if I haven\u2019t seen a photograph of the author, I visualize the possessor of that voice.\u201d
\n\u2015\u00a0Gerald Murnane<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/p>\n
\u201cAction is the pulse of any good story, but the character is the heart. If the action has no consequence to the character, the story loses heart.\u201d
\n\u2015\u00a0Linda Yezak<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n
\u201c\u2026 I was constantly trying to shoehorn characters into each other\u2019s lives, planting them on street corners or in caf\u00e9s together so that they could\u00a0talk<\/em>. So that they could\u00a0explain<\/em>\u00a0things to each other, from across the great human divide. But it was all so contrived. Contrived and meddlesome, really, because sometimes you just have to let your characters get on with it, which is to say coexist. If their paths cross and they can teach each other something, fine. If they don’t, well, that’s interesting, too. Or, if it isn’t interesting, then maybe you need to back up and start again.\u201d
\n\u2015\u00a0Lisa Halliday,\u00a0Asymmetry<\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/p>\n
\u201cWe will, of course, without hesitation use art to parody, ridicule, debunk, or criticize ideologies–but this is very different.\u201d
\n\u2015 David Foster Wallace,\u00a0Consider the Lobster and Other Essays<\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n
\u201cI still suspect that most people start out with some kind of ability to tell a story but that it gets lost along the way. Of course, the ability to create life with words is essentially a gift. If you have it in the first place, you can develop it; if you don’t have it, you might as well forget it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2015\u00a0Flannery O’Connor,\u00a0Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose<\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cMemories are made in the creation of fictional characters.\u201d
\n\u2015\u00a0Mitta Xinindlu<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/p>\n
\u201cPerhaps the critics are right: this generation may not produce literature equal to that of any past generation \u2013 who cares? The writer will be dead before anyone can judge him \u2013 but he must go on writing, reflecting disorder, defeat, despair, should that be all he sees at the moment, but ever searching for the elusive love, joy, and hope \u2013 qualities which, as in the act of life itself, are best when they have to be struggled for, and are not commonly come by with much ease, either by a critic’s formula or by a critic’s yearning.\u201d
\n\u2015\u00a0Bill Styron<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/p>\n
\u201cTaken to the highest form, description should be both a window to the world and a mirror reflection the heart and soul of the point-of-view character.\u201d
\n\u2015\u00a0Karen Azinger,\u00a0Power Writing: Make Your Genre Fiction Soar: by the Author of The Silk & Steel Saga<\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/p>\n
\u201cFor example, instead of saying that it was a rainy night, you can say, \u201cAt night she could see from her window that the postcard-perfect sky from an hour ago had turned to a dark abyss filled with tar-black clouds that had just begun to weep heavily, as though completely devoid of any hope in the humankind beneath.\u201d
\n\u2015\u00a0Pawan Mishra,\u00a0On Writing Wonderfully: The Craft of Creative Fiction Writing<\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/p>\n
\u201cWriting \u2013 the act of one person giving a piece of their soul to another.\u201d
\n\u2015\u00a0J. Spredemann<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n
\u201cI read a few of those books on how to write a screenplay, but, just like I told you with the school thing, once again, most of those books are written by someone who\u2019s never written a good script. You look at the writer\u2019s credits and they\u2019ve written one episode of\u00a0The Golden Girls<\/em>\u00a0or something. People who write good scripts, write scripts. They don\u2019t write books about writing scripts.\u201d
\n\u2015\u00a0Rob Zombie<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/p>\n
\u201cFiction gives us empathy: it puts us inside the minds of other people, gives us the gift of seeing the world through their eyes. Fiction is a lie that tells us true things, over and over.\u201d
\n\u2015\u00a0Neil Gaiman, April 2013 introduction to\u00a0Fahrenheit 451<\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n
\u201cAs a start-up writer, there is need for you to define your area of interest. You should know what inspires you to becoming a writer. Choose what interests you most and make it your pathway to achieving your dream, then work on it. Both fiction and nonfiction writers have everything in common \u2013 they are writers, authors, and the both achieve greatness and influence when they write prolifically.\u201d
\n\u2015\u00a0Godspower Oparaugo,\u00a0The ABC of Writing: The Simplest Method to Write Books<\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/p>\n
\u201cGood fiction can help us to expand our circle of empathy to include people unlike ourselves.\u201d
\n\u2015\u00a0Eitan Levy<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n
\u201cNovels don\u2019t contain only exceptional situations, life or death choices, or major ordeals; there are also everyday difficulties, temptations, ordinary disappointments; and, in response, every human attitude, every type of behavior, from the finest to the most wretched\u2026 There are grown-ups who will say no, that literature is not life, that novels teach you nothing. They are wrong. Literature informs, instructs, it prepares you for life.\u201d
\n\u2015\u00a0Laurence Coss\u00e9,\u00a0A Novel Bookstore<\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/p>\n
\u201cFantasy is kind of a plasma in which other things can be carried. I don\u2019t think this is a ghetto. This is, fantasy is, almost a sea in which other genres swim. Now it may be that there has developed in the last couple of hundred years a subset of fantasy which merely uses a different iconography, and that is, if you like, the serious literature, the Booker Prize contender. Fantasy can be serious literature. Fantasy has often been serious literature. You have to be fairly dense to think that\u00a0Gulliver\u2019s Travels<\/em>\u00a0is only a story about a guy having a real fun time among big people and little people and horses and stuff like that. What the book was about was something else. Fantasy can carry quite a serious burden, and so can humor. So what you\u2019re saying is, strip away the trolls and the dwarves and things and put everyone into modern dress, get them to agonize a bit, mention Virginia Woolf a few times, and there! Hey! I\u2019ve got a serious novel. But you don\u2019t actually have to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2015\u00a0Terry Pratchett<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cA key reason one novel receives a one-star review while another gets top stars always boils down to the story-crafting of each. A novel written by an author who does not fully grasp the technical basics of writing fiction is the one likely to get that one-star review.\u201d
\n\u2015\u00a0Harold Bascom<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/p>\n
\u201cSometimes fiction was so powerful that it even had reverberations in the real world. When I went to London with Louise and Paul, we visited Sherlock Holmes’ house. Tourists from all over the world were there to see this house. But Sherlock Holmes never existed. Yet people come to see his typewriter, his magnifying glass, his deerstalker, his furniture, his interior, in a reconstruction based on Conan Doyle’s novels. People know this, yet they queue up and pay to visit a house that is just a meticulous recreation of a fiction.\u201d
\n\u2015\u00a0Delphine de Vigan,\u00a0D’apr\u00e8s une Histoire Vraie<\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can not describe anything without betraying your point of view, your aspirations, your fears, your hopes. Everything.\u201d
\n\u2015\u00a0James Baldwin,\u00a0Notes of a Native Son<\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/p>\n
\u201cThe joy of reading is in discovery; a good writer creates, “gaps, spaces, and absences,” in a richly layered text. He\/she creates a desire in the reader to strive for meaning. Paradoxically, the writer guides the reader, but allows them some flexibility to recreate the text, thereby putting their own unique interpretation on what they have read.\u201d
\n\u2015\u00a0Suzy Davies<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/p>\n
\u201cCommercial fiction writing \u2013 where my bread is buttered \u2013 is fairly straightforward. The writing is simply efficiency and story. The more you have of one the less you need of the other.\u201d
\n\u2015\u00a0Joe Ducie<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/p>\n
\u201cI keep being told that my writing is getting better and better. – Now, at first I am thrilled by that, but then I think, Isn’t everybody’s? Do some authors grow cozy with their own style, and stay there? I think of writing fiction as an art form. As such, it’s a constant exploration of new and developing ideas. If any of my books were much like my others, I don’t think I’d even bother to write them.\u201d
\n\u2015\u00a0Edward Fahey<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n
\u201cThat’s what we storytellers do. We restore order with imagination. We instill hope again and again and again.\u201d
\n\u2015\u00a0Kelly Marcel & Sue Smith<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/p>\n
\u201cWriting is like making a delicious cake. Use the best ingredients, layer the flavors, and finish it with panache. If your product is made with good taste, people will ask for more.\u201d
\n\u2015\u00a0Claudia McCants,\u00a0Broken Angel<\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/p>\n
\u201cFiction is a careful combination of observation, inspiration, and imagination.\u201d
\n\u2015\u00a0Luke Taylor<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/p>\n
\u201cFiction must convince our bodies for it to have any chance of convincing our minds.\u201d
\n\u2015\u00a0Bonnie Friedman,\u00a0Writing Past Dark: Envy, Fear, Distraction and Other Dilemmas in the Writer’s Life<\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/p>\n
\u201cShe asserted that the best fictional detail was a chosen detail, not a remembered one – for fictional truth was not only the truth of observation, which was the truth of mere journalism. The best fictional detail was the detail that should have defined the character or the episode or the atmosphere. Fictional truth was what should have happened in a story – not necessarily what did happen or what had happened.\u201d
\n\u2015\u00a0John Irving,\u00a0A Widow for One Year<\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/p>\n
\u201cPerhaps this is what Henry James meant when he talked about the \u201cirresponsibility\u201d of characters. Characters are irresponsible, art is irresponsible when compared to life, because it is first and foremost important that a character be real, and as readers or watchers we tend to applaud any effort made towards the construction of that reality. We do not, of course, indulge actual people in the world this way at all. In real life, the fact that something seems real to someone is not enough to interest us, or to convince us that that reality is interesting. But the self-reality of fictional characters is deeply engrossing, which is why villains are lovable in literature in ways that they are not in life.\u201d
\n\u2015\u00a0James Wood,\u00a0The Irresponsible Self: On Laughter and the Novel<\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\u201cI believe one of the important differences between creating literature and just telling a story around the campfire is that in literature you\u2019re recreating the experience of life, not just relaying a \u2018this happened, then that happened\u2019 kind of narrative. The specific details and layers of depth that make the world of the story \u2014 and what the character is experiencing in that world \u2014 as real as possible are elements I love as a reader and, consequently, elements I strive to use effectively as a writer.\u201d
\n\u2015\u00a0Lara Campbell McGehee<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/p>\n
\u201cWriting is a solitary business. It\u2019s just you and your characters and a blank page you need to fill.\u201d
\n\u2015\u00a0Shannon Celebi<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/p>\n
\u201cFantasy remains a human right: we make in our measure and in our derivative mode, because we are made: and not only made, but made in the image and likeness of a Maker.\u201d
\n\u2015\u00a0J.R.R. Tolkien,\u00a0The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays<\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/p>\n
\u201cJ.R.R. Tolkien has confessed that about a third of the way through The Fellowship of the Ring, some ruffian named Strider confronted the hobbits in an inn, and Tolkien was in despair. He didn’t know who Strider was, where the book was going, or what to write next. Strider turns out to be no lesser person than Aragorn, the unrecognized and uncrowned king of all the forces of good, whose restoration to rule is, along with the destruction of the evil ring, the engine that moves the plot of the whole massive trilogy, The Lord of the Rings.\u201d
\n\u2015\u00a0Ansen Dibell,\u00a0Plot<\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/p>\n
\u201cIf they are good characters, they have minds of their owns. If they are great characters, they go stomping off into the sunset and leave you to pick up the trash.\u201d
\n\u2015\u00a0Wendi Kelly<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/p>\n
\u201cGood fiction is trawling back into the past and digging up the real characters who’ve influenced your entire being.\u201d
\n\u2015\u00a0Ken Scott<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople say to me they don’t have time to write and I just look at them like they’re crazy. Like I have time to write?? If you want to be a writer there’s only one way to do it…make time to write.\u201d
\n\u2015\u00a0D.A. Nelson<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n
\u201cEditing fiction is like using your fingers to untangle the hair of someone you love.\u201d
\n\u2015\u00a0Stephanie Roberts<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/p>\n
\u201cTo be stories at all they must be a series of events: but it must be understood that this series – the plot, as we call it – is only really a net whereby to catch something else.\u201d
\n\u2015\u00a0C.S. Lewis,\u00a0On Stories: And Other Essays on Literature<\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/p>\n
\u201cA related question is where in time to begin. Should you begin far back in a character’s past and move forward, or should you begin in the present and make use of flashbacks only where necessary? … If the material with which you want to open the story is from the character’s deep past, then there has to be an important relationship between what has happened in the past and what is about to happen. In other words, is the material with which you open the story an arrow pointing toward the unified effect?\u201d
\n\u2015\u00a0Julie Checkoway,\u00a0Creating Fiction: Instruction and Insights from Teachers of the Associated Writing Programs<\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n
\u201cYour choice of genre has ramifications for the story. Fun ramifications. Ramifications that will help you accomplish what it is you\u2019re hoping to do with this novel\u2026 It\u2019s all about the impact of your core story idea. What genre would give your idea the maximum support in your effort to accomplish the things you love about it?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2013 Jeff Gerke,\u00a0Write Your Novel in a Month<\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cWriters write about how it feels to be human. Just as a sommelier must attune to the subtle difference between hints of peach or orange in a pinot gris, writers must attune to the subtle difference between lust and desire or outrage and disgust.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2013 William Kenower,\u00a0Fearless Writing<\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n
\u201cYou know, there are no rules. Whether [or not] I hit the keyboard, I\u2019m writing in my head. I\u2019m working on my books all the time. I write best in short, intense periods. A period, say, of three or four months \u2013 very intense work. And then I draw back and read, and I do other things. Again, I don\u2019t think there\u2019s any rule to any of this. It\u2019s the greatest profession because you do it all in your own way.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2013 Anne Rice\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cIf I write in public, every time I need to know what a character is doing with his hand or foot, I can look up and study people and find compelling gestures that I can harvest. Writing in public gives you that access to a junkyard of details all around you.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2013 Chuck Palahniuk\u00a0<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cPlainspoken writing looks easy. But to write plainly, transparently, takes modesty, discipline and saintly restraint. The result goes down like a glass of clean cold water, and is hard to argue with.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2013 Peter Selgin,\u00a0179 Ways to Save a Novel<\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cThe triumph is to hold a finished novel in your hand that\u2019s going to be published in four or five months and that it\u2019s not awful. The triumph is that it\u2019s not awful.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2013 Anne Lamott\u00a0<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s this feeling in the world that artistic ability is just a gift and there\u2019s nothing else to it. I think it\u2019s a skill set. It\u2019s no different than math. It\u2019s a thing you need to learn how to do \u2013 you need to practice it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2013 Andy Weir<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cIf the protagonist is the most important character in your story, your antagonist should be willing to fight for the same distinction. In sports, playing a tough competitor helps you up your game, and your hero needs a powerful opponent to up his game as well. Too many antagonists are poorly drawn \u2013 cardboard villains who do not pose a threat worthy of your protagonist or your story. Create a complex and well-rounded villain.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2013 Paula Munier,\u00a0The Writer\u2019s Guide to Beginnings<\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cAs a man, you know who is right and who is wrong; you have to judge. As a writer, you should not judge, you should understand.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2013 Ernest Hemingway<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cStories come out of living, and looking, and reacting, and observing and thinking. I can\u2019t explain what the source is\u2026 That\u2019s the experience of being alive and trying to render it coherent somehow.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2013 Jhumpa Lahiri<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cWriters are like dancers, like athletes. Without that exercise, the muscles seize up. Exercise the writing muscle every day.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2013 Jane Yolen<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cThe X factor on every page is, does the writer love what they\u2019re writing about? Anything you love that you\u2019ve read in your life, from page 1, you feel the writer\u2019s passion. That\u2019s the thing that you can\u2019t put your finger on.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2013 Brad Meltzer<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cSome things are hard to write about. After something happens to you, you go to write it down, and either you over dramatize it or underplay it, exaggerate the wrong parts or ignore the important ones. At any rate, you never write it quite the way you want to.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2013 Sylvia Plath\u00a0<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cIdeas come from everywhere, provided that you\u2019re thinking about everything that happens to you as a potential story. I like to think that the difference between storytellers and nonstorytellers is that we storytellers, like fishermen, are constantly dragging an \u201cidea net\u201d along with us. Other people pass through their lives and never notice how many stories are going on all around them; we, however, think of everything as a potential story.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2013 Orson Scott Card,\u00a0Writing Fantasy & Science Fiction\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cFalsely straining yourself to put something into a book where it doesn\u2019t really belong, it\u2019s not doing anybody any favors. And the reader can tell.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2013 Margaret Atwood<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cWriting is at its best \u2013 always, always, always \u2013 when it is a kind of inspired play for the writer. I can write in cold blood if I have to, but I like it best when it\u2019s fresh and almost too hot to handle.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2013 Stephen King<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat happens is that I find characters that I both love and worry about. And then I have to keep writing to see if they\u2019re going to be ok or not.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2013 Wally Lamb<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cTry to develop steady work habits, but keep to it. Don\u2019t be thin-skinned or easily discouraged because it\u2019s an odds long proposition; all of the arts are.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2013 John Updike<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cYou write every day. You make it a point of sitting down and writing even if you have absolutely nothing in your mind to write. The act of sitting there and trying to produce something is really important.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2013 Dave Barry\u00a0<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cAsk yourself the vital question: why now? Why is this story happening now? Why do we, the audience, need to see the story that\u2019s happening now \u2013 what is the value of us entering the world at this point in time? This will help you figure out the shift in the status quo that led us here. It\u2019s not just about an inciting incident, but about the prominence and urgency of the problem.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2013 Chuck Wendig,\u00a0Damn Fine Story\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you create foreboding, remember to think about atmosphere and mood. Invoke the senses. Think about how you can use sound \u2013 like the plaintive cawing of seagulls or a crying child \u2013 or smell \u2013 think of what kind of effect a foul odor will have on a character. Foreboding happens in the moment; you don\u2019t have to make good on it the way you do if you use foreshadowing. You\u2019re painting an atmosphere to establish a feeling of unease and worry in the reader.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2013 Jordan Rosenfeld,\u00a0Make a Scene, Revised and Expanded Edition<\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cThe narrative and the way authors present themselves [inspires confidence that I\u2019ll be able to find the work a home with a publisher]. There isn\u2019t a magic formula or a gimmick or even a subgenre that really works for me; I\u2019m not someone that\u2019s actively looking for the same thing over and over.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2013 Eddie Schneider, JABberwocky Literary Agency<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you\u2019ve got something that\u2019s unfixable, you\u2019ve got two choices: you can either beat your head against the wall and try to do the impossible or you can set it aside, put it away, chalk it up to experience and try to write a different novel.\u201d<\/p>\n