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. 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.

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

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.