Archive by Author
Ramos on writing
I try to write every day, even when I’m not motivated. Ritual is very important to me.–Mel Ramos
Frank & Wall on freewrites
Freewrites help you develop a vital relationship to your voice: They trick you into losing control, help you shake loose from external manipulations. They give you a chance to stumble on those interesting accidents which later can become significant events in your fiction, and focal points for improvisation.–Thaisa Frank & Dorothy Wall, Finding Your Voice: [...]
Frank & Wall on a fiction writer’s approach to voice(s)
The trick is to see potential in all these voices. Milk them for whatever they have to offer, drape them in costumes, set them up in impossible circumstances. This is the way fiction writers must approach everything in the world. Your question should always be: What can I get from this person, this image, this [...]
Frank & Wall on the creation of characters
In the creation of characters, you’re using your voice to project imaginatively into another body, perhaps another time and place. You’re drawing on your emotions, memories, impressions, but you’re throwing your voice–indeed your very self–like a ventriloquist. You’re simultaneously being yourself (even discovering yourself!) and abandoning yourself to enter fully into the voice and body [...]
NYT Book Review on creating characters
William James once called his brother, Henry James, “thin blooded and priggish.” So Henry created a character who had these characteristics.–NYT Book Review
Frank & Wall on caricatures
The caricature is simply the early manifestation of the more intriguing and surprising person. Your persona voices will evolve. Like sea creatures moving up the evolutionary scale, they’ll grow lungs, gain faith, an afterlife. They’ll dangle a high heel, whisper their secrets. Perhaps they’ll even surprise you by becoming unforgettable characters.–Thaisa Frank & Dorothy WAll, [...]
Baxter on staging
Staging in fiction involves putting characters in specific positions in the scene so that some unvoiced nuance is revealed…Certainly it involves the writer in the stagecraft of her characters just as a director would, blocking out the movement of actors.–Charles Baxtor, The Art of Subtext
Warren on voice
It would take a whole book to chart the brilliant deviations the voice can take to prevent its owner from being known.–Iris Warren, Voice Teacher
Baxter on books
Books sometimes fall into your hands in the oddest ways. Meeting up with a particular work of literature may have an eeriness of occasion that resembles an accident that is not really accidental.–Charles Baxter, The Art of Subtext
Whitney on being a writer
You must want it enough. Enough to take all the rejections, enough to pay the price of disappointment and discouragement while you are leaning. Like any other artist you must learn your craft–then you can add all the genius you like.–Phyllis Whitney
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