You have to roll up your sleeves and be a stonecutter before you can become a sculptor - command of craft always precedes art: apprentice, journeyman, master.
Voice is one of the most elusive qualities in any story. We recognize it when we hear it, but it's hard consciously to create an authentic voice. Somehow voice seems to be the natural manifestation of all the narrative decisions we've made so far. We discover it more than we fabricate it.
For the big stuff to work credibly, you've got to get the little stuff absolutely right.
The simplest tool of the writer is repetition. . . . The simplest tool of the writer is repetition.
You will not read voice on the page; you will hear it in your head.
It's not enough simply to record the way people actually talk. The dialogue must be concentrated, shaped, dramatically moving, in a way that real-life conversation seldom is.
We create an interior 'movie' in the reader's head through words on the page.
Storytelling is the art of unfolding knowledge in a way that makes each piece contribute to a larger truth.
The habits of craft, developed day in and day out over a working lifetime, create moments of astonishment, sublime and magical effects, precisely because the writer is not thinking overtly about making art.
The only way to write a novel is to proceed as if you had all the time in the world.
Voice really depends on the answer to the question, Who is telling this story? . . . That will color your diction-and determine your metaphors, your sensibility.
But a writing project begins not just in doubt but also in faith-that if your passion is genuine, if you have mastered the elements of your craft, in the act of writing you will learn the rest of what you need to know in order to do justice to your subject.
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