Writing advice from the Greats
Here's a few writing tips to keep you enthused...
Okay let’s admit it.
Writing is hard…
Anyone who tells you otherwise has absolutely no idea what they are talking about.
And it’s always a good thing to fill up on your creative juices when you can.
So, here I am bringing you some much needed writing advice from some of the greatest writers this world has read.
Virginia Woolf
On putting your writing first…
The focus of my advice is immersion, without the interruptions of others people’s ideas, needs, and demands. What hasn’t changed over time is how much women are expected to be all things to all people, and because of this it is a constant fight to put their writing first. Writing is a serious endeavor. It is not something to be done sitting on
the sofa with children or spouses coming in to ask where you keep the biscuits or the automobile keys. Or to be interrupted by an employer who calls your home at night to ask where you put last year’s accounts. I’m sure that you must have your own example of how the world intrudes on your work. I’m interested to hear your story.
Agatha Christie
On the writing process …
You start into it, inflamed by an idea, full of hope, full indeed of confidence (about the only times in my life when I have been full of confidence)… You then get into difficulties, don't see your way out, and finally manage to accomplish more or less what you first meant to accomplish, though losing confidence all the time. Having finished it, you know that it is absolutely rotten. A couple of months later you wonder whether it may not be all right after all
H. G. Wells
On adding tension…
If you are in difficulties with a book,
try the element of surprise:
attack it at an hour when it isn't expecting it.
P. G. Wodehouse
On writing with structure in mind…
I think the success of every novel – if it's a novel of action – depends on the high spots. The thing to do is to say to yourself, '"Which are my big scenes?'' and then get every drop of juice out of them. The principle I always go on in writing a novel is to think of the characters in terms of actors in a play. I say to myself, if a big name were playing this part, and if he found that after a strong first act he had practically nothing to do in the second act, he would walk out. Now, then, can I twist the story so as to give him plenty to do all the way through?
Arthur Conan Doyle
On removing mental barriers while writing…
In short stories it has always seemed to me that so long as you produce your dramatic effect, accuracy of detail matters little. I have never striven for it and have made some bad mistakes in consequence. What matter If I can hold my readers ? I claim that I may make my own conditions, and I do so. I have taken liberties in some of the Sherlock Holmes stories. I have been told, for example, that in "The Adventure of Silver Blaze," half the characters would have been in jail and the other half warned off the Turf for ever. That does not trouble me in the least when the story is admittedly a fantasy.