Dramatic Writing Quotes

In dramatic writing, the very essence is character change. The character at the end is not the same as he was at the beginning. He's changed-psychologically, maybe even physically. ~ Robert Towne

The greatest rules of dramatic writing are conflict, conflict, conflict. ~ James Frey

I believe that one of the most sound ideas in dramatic writing is that in order to create the universal, you must pay very great attention to the specific. Universality, I think, emerges from truthful identity of what is. ~ Lorraine Hansberry

Failure in the theater is more dramatic and uglier than any other form of writing. It costs so much, you feel so guilty. ~ Lillian Hellman

New dramatic writing has banished conversational dialogue from the stage as a relic of dramaturgy based on conflict and exchange: any story, intrigue or plot that is too neatly tied up is suspect. ~ Patrice Pavis

I don't have an aversion to quote unquote remakes, because I understand what dramatic writing is, what the dramatic profession has always been about, which is talent, not the pretext for its exhibition. ~ William Monahan

'Back to Blood' really took it out of me. While I was writing it, I just never went out anywhere, except to the gym. ~ Tom Wolfe

I shall live badly if I do not write, and I shall write badly if I do not live. ~ Francoise Sagan

I've gone a year and not written a song just because I couldn't think of anything. But I always come back to it because there's always that little buzz you get when you do something well and sing it out loud to the public. And people clap and tell you how great you are. ~ Guy Clark

The writer who refuses to explore the darker regions of the heart will never be able to write convincingly about the wonder, the magic and the joy of love for just as goodness cannot be trusted unless it has breathed the same air as evil. ~ Nick Cave

I think that's, it's my way of writing, it's my, it's part of you know for lack of a better word, God-given talent that I have that I'm really good at that kind of dialogue. ~ Quentin Tarantino

Not taking criticism of your writing personally is an enormous step towards surviving the studio system. ~ Robert Ben Garant

...teaching is like playing jazz. Even if you perform the same number over and over, it never comes out the same twice, and you don't know exactly how it will sound until you hear it. Teaching is like writing with your voice ~ Earl R. Babbie

Are you going to change yet again, shift your position according to the questions that are put to you, and say that the objections are not really directed at the place from which you are speaking? Are you going to declare yet again that you have never been what you have been reproached with being? Are you already preparing the way out that will enable you in your next book to spring up somewhere else and declare as you're now doing: no, no, I'm not where you are lying in wait for me, but over here, laughing at you?'
'What, do you imagine that I would take so much trouble and so much pleasure in writing, do you think that I would keep so persistently to my task, if I were not preparing – with a rather shaky hand – a labyrinth into which I can venture, into which I can move my discourse... in which I can lose myself and appear at last to eyes that I will never have to meet again. I am no doubt not the only one who writes in order to have no face. Do not ask who I am and do not ask me to remain the same: leave it to our bureaucrats and our police to see that our papers are in order. At least spare us their morality when we write. ~ Michel Foucault

The hardest part of ghost writing other people's stories is capturing their voices so that it isn't you talking, it's them. ~ Michael Robotham

There may be phrases which shall be palaces to dwell in, treasure-houses to explore; a single word may be a window from which one may perceive all the kingdoms of the earth and the glory of them. Oftentimes a word shall speak what accumulated volumes have labored in vain to utter: there may be years of crowded passion in a word, and half a life in a sentence. ~ Thomas Wentworth Higginson

It's not the despair, Laura. I can take the despair. It's the hope I can't stand. ~ Brian Stimpson, Clockwise
~ John Cleese

While 'Rap Trax!' recorded, Neel found some scrap paper and we started writing our first lyrics. Bandying about subject matter and title, we got stuck on the idea of 'cool', so my first rap song became 'Pretty Cool'. It was a symbol of our confidence. We weren't awesome cool or mega cool. We were only ... pretty cool. ~ Nikesh Shukla

All our life we had been dreaming to get through every little hole into this beautiful and unfamiliar world where parents and children love each other not for something but in spite of everything, to plunge into this fairy world entirely, settle down and live there. So why didn't I feel happy when it happened for real? ~ Igor Eliseev

In many college English courses the words "myth" and "symbol" are given a tremendous charge of significance. You just ain't no good unless you can see a symbol hiding, like a scared gerbil, under every page. And in many creative writing course the little beasts multiply, the place swarms with them. What does this Mean? What does that Symbolize? What is the Underlying Mythos? Kids come lurching out of such courses with a brain full of gerbils. And they sit down and write a lot of empty pomposity, under the impression that that's how Melville did it. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

I thought I'd been condescended to as an Indian - that was nothing compared to the condescension for writing young adult literature. ~ Sherman Alexie

If he can write a book at all, a writer cannot do it by peeping over his shoulder at somebody else, any more than a woman can have a baby by watching some other woman have one. It is a genital process, and all of its stages are intra-abdominal; ~ James M. Cain

The idea of the writer who writes nineteen novels, with various ups and downs and levels of experimentation, isn't around so much now. There's a focus, I think, on fewer books, with more pressure on each book to succeed. With that there comes, I think, a certain pressure towards shapeliness in fiction. Towards neatness. And I think writers feel that, and it can effect how they write. ~ Chad Harbach

My younger sister Debby had died of cancer, which started me writing - the sense of life being short. Cancer focuses your mind. ~ Meg Rosoff

The only kind of film I want to write is a story where I can keep on seeing the stories play out. I'm a huge television fan, and I'm a huge continuing storyline fan. ~ Melissa Rosenberg

Writing is like a charcoal painting, a black and white story ~ Dave McDonald

I think if you are truly convinced of why you're writing something, if it's a strong enough dream of yours to share this vision and see it realized, you can almost always find a way motivate yourself, to keep going back to the drawing board and trying new things and approaches. ~ Diane Drake

If they keep exposing you to education, you might even realize some day that man becomes immortal only in what he writes on paper, or hacks into rock, or slabbers onto a canvas, or pulls out of a piano. ~ Robert Ruark

A writer's primary goal is to make sense. The bookstore's is to make cents. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

But this I can never explain to a painter, I suppose; how words live in companies, never used, exept when one writes. (5/2/1925 - From a letter to Jacques Raverat) ~ Virginia Woolf

When someone steals your original ideas? Feel sorry for them.
When someone steals your thunder or applause? Feel sorry for them.
When someone doesn't support your dreams or work ?

Feel sorry for them.

But when someone steals your truth, your voice, your heart or your words?

Feel truly sorry for them

And then kick their ass.
It's yours.

Because you've been way too fucking polite. ~ R.M. Engelhardt

Every author in some way portrays himself in his works, even if it be against his will. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Perhaps this new kind of reading will appeal to us after we give it a try. ~ S.A. Tawks

When authors who write literary fiction begin to write screenplays, everybody assumes that's the end. Here's another who's never going to write well again. ~ Richard Russo

As a piece of literacy criticism, Freud's best writing is about Dostoyevsky. It's a kind of displaced literacy criticism. ~ Dennis Potter

I spent much of my childhood in northern Quebec, and often there was no radio, no television - there wasn't a lot to entertain us. When it rained, I stayed inside reading, writing, drawing. ~ Margaret Atwood

Even as I was writing 'Empire State,' I knew there were more adventures for the main character, private detective Rad Bradley, to have. I also knew that the world was far larger than what I'd presented in book one. ~ Adam Christopher

Writing ink is the magic that allows nothing to become something. It catches the fleeting idea and seeks out the glances of those who wish to see. Even a random ink splat will mean something to someone. ~ Fennel Hudson

One writes because one has a burning desire to objectify what it is indispensable to one's happiness to express ... ~ Marianne Moore

The words were good words, Ulysses felt, maybe even great words, but the list was very incomplete. He was just getting started. The words needed to be arranged, fussed with, put in the order of his heart. ~ Kate DiCamillo

Making a story from the messy thoughts and half-thoughts in her head, building a world and lives and taking them apart again, fitting the pieces together another way until it feels right, as right as she can make it feel. ~ Caitlin R. Kiernan

Which is an interactive sport for our family, since Gil likes to groan over the writing and point out the plot twists ahead of time, and Jeremy tears his hair out over the historical inaccuracies, and Dad makes corny jokes, till Mom reminds us, loudly, that some people are trying to watch the movie. Then we'll all quiet down for about five minutes, until Olivia remarks that the costume designer should have dressed the star in kitten heels instead, because it's a lot harder to run in stilettos. ~ Caitlen Rubino-Bradway

Anyone who writes an autobiographical work at the age of 34 is, at best, presumptuous. It occurred to me that it was time to set the record straight. ~ Jessica Savitch

In writing biography, fact and fiction shouldn't be mixed. And if they are, the fictional points should be printed in red ink, the facts printed in black ink. ~ Catherine Drinker Bowen

When I write I just keep a waste paper basket handy in case I am experiencing a block. ~ Ruskin Bond

The best part of writing is sharing it. ~ Kerry Langan

That's why I write, because life never works except in retrospect. You can't control life, at least you can control your version. ~ Chuck Palahniuk

The Russian-born novelist's writing habits were famously peculiar. Beginning in 1950, he composed first drafts in pencil on ruled index cards, which he stored in long file boxes. Since Nabokov claimed, he pictured an entire novel in complete form before he began writing it, this method allowed him to compose passages out of sequence, in whatever order he pleased... ~ Mason Currey

Isn't it remarkable how everyone who knew [D.H.] Lawrence has felt compelled to write about him? Why, he's had more books written about him than any writer since Byron! ~ Aldous Huxley

Why is joy not considered a fit subject for an artist? ~ Eugene Manlove Rhodes

In writing non-fiction about people who are living, you are always walking a fine line, carrying a burden to be fair that, in my opinion, should always be there. ~ Jonathan Coleman

To turn life into words is to make life yours to do with as you please, instead of the other way round ~ Gore Vidal

Love your story. ~ A.D. Posey