Showing posts with label quotation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label quotation. Show all posts

Thursday, February 14

Part of the storytelling ability is simply the anticipation of boredom and the introduction of a sudden surprise

Part of the storytelling ability is simply the anticipation of boredom and the introduction of a sudden surprise, Phillip Lopate
Part of the storytelling ability is simply the anticipation of boredom and the introduction of a sudden surprise. To be a good storyteller you need to have first internalized the audience: that subvocal groan that says, “Okay, get on with it.” Not that you always have to cater to the audience’s expectations: you can cross them up, frustrate them, prolong their tension, though that too can be a way of entertaining them. In any case, you have to be aware of their demands, whether you satisfy them or not.

To Show and to Tell: The Craft of Literary Nonfiction
PHILLIP LOPATE
I came across this quote on Advice To Writers.

Photo credit: "All about Flickr titles, text, tags, and views" by kevin dooley under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.

Tuesday, June 26

Jack Kerouac: FEELING is what I like in art, not CRAFTINESS


I couldn't resist sharing this quotation from Jack Kerouac with you:
And be sure of this, I spent my entire youth writing slowly with revisions and endless rehashing speculation and deleting and got so I was writing one sentence a day and the sentence had no FEELING. Goddamn it, FEELING is what I like in art, not CRAFTINESS ....
I thought of Dean Wesley Smith when I read that! If you're curious, here's what Dean has to say about rewriting:

Rewriting, Part One
Rewriting, Part Two

In any case, it's an excellent interview, I'd encourage you to read it: Jack Kerouac, The Art of Fiction No. 41.

Photo credit: The Eye Of Faith

Friday, September 23

Robertson Davies: Asking an author if their work is autobiographical is like ...

To ask an author who hopes to be a serious writer if his work is autobiographical is like asking a spider where he buys his thread. The spider gets his thread right out of his own guts, and that is where the author gets his writing.
--Robertson Davies
Thanks to Veronika Corvine for the quotation.