Crafts Quotes - Page 24

• There are three necessary elements in a story - exposition, development, and drama. Exposition we may illustrate as "John Fortescue was a solicitor in the little town of X"; development as "One day Mrs Fortescue told him she was about to leave him for another man"; and drama as "You will do nothing of the kind," he said.

  Frank O'Connor

  Drama, Men, One Day

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• Character gives us qualities, but it is in our actions — what we do — that we are happy or the reverse.

  Aristotle

  Writing, Character, Giving

  "On the Art of Poetry".

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• Tragedy is an imitation not only of a complete action, but of events inspiring fear and pity. Such an effect is best produced when the events come on us by surprise; and the effect is heightened when, at the same time, they follow as cause and effect. The tragic wonder will then be great than if they happened of themselves or by accident; for even coincidences are most striking when they have an air of design.

  Aristotle

  Air, Design, Tragedy

  Aristotle (0101). “The Poetics of Aristotle”, p.18, Prabhat Prakashan

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• The beginning of human knowledge is through the senses, and the fiction writer begins where the human perception begins. He appeals through the senses, and you cannot appeal through the senses with abstractions.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Perception, Fiction, Appeals

  Flannery O'Connor (1969). “Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose”, p.67, Macmillan

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• At the beginning of their careers many writers have a need to overwrite. They choose carefully turned-out phrases; they want to impress their readers with their large vocabularies. By the excesses of their language, these young men and women try to hide their sense of inexperience. With maturity the writer becomes more secure in his ideas. He finds his real tone and develops a simple and effective style.

  Jorge Luis Borges

  Real, Writing, Maturity

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• The only way of expressing emotion in the form of art is by finding an "objective correlative"; in other words, a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula for that particular emotion; such that when the external facts, which must terminate in sensory experience, are given, the emotion is immediately evoked.

  T. S. Eliot

  Art, Facts, Events

  The Sacred Wood "Hamlet and His Problems" (1920).

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• Writing a first draft is like groping one's way into a dark room, or overhearing a faint conversation, or telling a joke whose punchline you've forgotten. As someone said, one writes mainly to rewrite, for rewriting and revising are how one's mind comes to inhabit the material fully.

  Ted Solotaroff

  Writing, Dark, Mind

  Ted Solotaroff (2008). “The Literary Community: Selected Essays : 1967-2007”

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• Rewriting is like scrubbing the basement floor with a toothbrush.

  Peter Murphy

  Writing, Toothbrushes, Basements

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• So I made an outline. Well, you know, days are going by, and I am not writing anything because this thing is laid out in front of me. It's as if you get every brochure for a trip you are going to go on and you get the minutest details of every step along the way. Well, I really doubt you're going to then get in the car and go. You know, it's like, why bother if it's all laid out in front of you?

  Steve Tesich

  Writing, Car, Doubt

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• Look if you like, but you will have to leap.

  W. H. Auden

  Looks, Leap, Ifs

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• A novel should be an experience and convey an emotional truth rather than arguments.

  Joyce Cary

  Writing, Emotional, Argument

  Joyce Cary, Alan Bishop (1976). “Selected essays”, Michael Joseph

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• No time for poetry but exactly what is.

  Jack Kerouac

  Poetry

  Jack Kerouac, Ann Charters (1996). “Selected letters, 1940-1956”, Penguin Paperbacks

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• First thought, best thought.

  Allen Ginsberg

  Firsts

  Allen Ginsberg (2015). “The Essential Ginsberg”, p.7, HarperCollins

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• By an epiphany he meant a sudden spiritual manifestation, whether in the vulgarity of speech or of gesture or memorable phrase of the mind itself. He believed it was for the man of letters to record these epiphanies with extreme care (saving them for later use, that is), seeing that they themselves are the most delicate and evanescent of moments.

  James Joyce

  Spiritual, Memorable, Men

  "Stephen Hero". Book by James Joyce, 1944.

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• Try and write straight English; never using slang except in dialogue and then only when unavoidable. Because all slang goes sour in a short time. I only use swear words, for example, that have lasted at least a thousand years for fear of getting stuff that will be simply timely and then go sour.

  Ernest Hemingway

  Writing, Years, Trying

  Ernest Hemingway, Carlos Baker (2003). “Ernest Hemingway Selected Letters 1917-1961”, p.308, Simon and Schuster

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• Whatever one wishes to say, there is one noun only by which to express it, one verb only to give it life, one adjective only which will describe it. One must search until one has discovered them, this noun, this verb, this adjective, and never rest content with approximations, never resort to trickery, however happy, or to vulgarism, in order to dodge the difficulty.

  Guy de Maupassant

  Order, Giving, Wish

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• This element of surprise or mystery — the detective element as it is sometimes rather emptily called — is of great importance in a plot. It occurs through a suspension of the time-sequence; a mystery is a pocket in time, and it occurs crudely, as in "Why did the queen die?" and more subtly in half-explained gestures and words, the true meaning of which only dawns pages ahead. Mystery is essential to a plot, and cannot be appreciated without intelligence.

  E. M. Forster

  Queens, Marching On, Appreciate

  "Aspects Of the Novel".

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• Mystery is the basic element of all works of art.

  Luis Bunuel

  Art, Elements, Mystery

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• Fiction shows the external effects of internal conditions. Be aware of the tension between internal and external movement.

  Raymond Carver

  Fiction, Movement, Tension

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• Dialogue in fiction is what characters do to one another.

  Elizabeth Bowen

  Character, Fiction, Dialogue

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• The test of a round character is whether it is capable of surprising in a convincing way. If it never surprises it is flat. Flat characters ... in their purest form ... are constructed round a single idea or quality; when there is more than one factor to them, we get the beginning of the curve toward the round. The really flat character can be experessed in one sentence such as, "I will never desert Mr Micawber." There is Mrs Micawber - she says she won't desert Mr Micawber; she doesn't, and there she is.

  E. M. Forster

  Character, Curves, Ideas

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• The great majority of modern third-person narration is "I" narration very thinly disguised.

  John Fowles

  Majority, Modern, Third Person

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• That accurst autobiographic form which puts a premium on the loose, the improvised, the cheap, and the easy.

  Henry James

  Easy, Form, Premium

  Henry James (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry James (Illustrated)”, p.14943, Delphi Classics

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• The secret of successful fiction is a continual slight novelty.

  Edmund Gosse

  Successful, Secret, Fiction

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• The object of the novelist is to keep the reader entirely oblivious of the fact that the author exists - even of the fact he is reading a book.

  Ford Madox Ford

  Book, Reading, Novelists

  Ford Madox Ford (1964). “Critical Writings of Ford Madox Ford”, p.76, U of Nebraska Press

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