Short Story Writing Quotes

A story is about a single moment in a character's life when a definitive choice is made, after which nothing is the same. ~ John L'Heureux

Sometimes ... it takes me an entire day to write a recipe, to communicate it correctly. It's really like writing a little short story. ~ Julia Child

It's difficult to write a really good short story because it must be a complete and finished reflection of life with only a few words to use as tools. There isn't time for bad writing in a short story. ~ Edna Ferber

I have some other novels I want to write. I have a lot of short stories - I love the short story. ~ George R R Martin

It's a distillation of all I know about writing: short-story writing, screenwriting, journalism - everything. There is no future in the novel, so far as I can see. I'm trying to show where writing is going to be. I may not get there, but I will point the way." In ~ Gerald Clarke

I write movies, so - I look at boxing, and I commentated on it, as if I were telling you the story of a movie or a short story. ~ Ferdie Pacheco

We all have an ongoing narrative inside our heads, the narrative that is spoken aloud if a friend asks a question. That narrative feels deeply natural to me. We also hang on to scraps of dialogue. Our memories don't usually serve us up whole scenes complete with dialogue. So I suppose I'm saying that I like to work from what a character is likely to remember, from a more interior place. ~ Lydia Davis

Find the key emotion; this may be all you need know to find your short story. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald

I do think that short story writing is often a matter of luck. ~ Robert Sheckley

But I MUST say what I feel and think in some way - it is such a relief! But the effort is getting to be greater than the relief. ~ Charlotte Perkins Gilman

I knew little about short story writing then so it was rough going, but I did find the experience very memorable. ~ Haruki Murakami

I made many decisions, some awful and others brilliant, but I found ways to keep that openness in my soul that meant more to me than breathing. I told them over the years what I was doing, how I was trying what no one in my family had ever tried to do. When I was failing, I admitted that as well, and they listened politely. I also knew that's all they could do. One lonely night in Connecticut, I pulled myself from a window's ledge. No one else next to me. Another day I chose to do something someone like me should have never accomplished, and yet I did, and kept going. I learned to recognize when others, like Jean, were much better than me, because they had faith in my soul. I believed in very little, but I kept going until I would get tired or defeated, and then I would take time to discover another wall to throw myself at. I was, and I am, and I will be, a peculiar kind of immigrant's son. I got old, and that made everything better, including me. ~ Sergio Troncoso

Here in Manto's own words that he wanted to mark his grave with:
In the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful
Here lies Saadat Hasan Manto and with him lie buried all the secrets and mysteries of the art of short-story writing ...
Under tons of earth he lies, still wondering who among the two is greater short-story writer: God or He. ~ Saadat Hasan Manto

I'll give you the whole secret to short story writing. Here it is. Rule 1: Write stories that please yourself. There is no Rule 2. ~ O. Henry

When I was in college, I used to write little ditties and short stories and poetry for my friends. Writing a book is another thing. It is so much different from my traditional day of dirty fingernails and greasy hair and hot pans. ~ Mario Batali

I'll give you the sole secret of short-story writing, and here it is: Rule 1. Write stories that please yourself. There is no rule 2. The technical points you can get from Bliss Perry. If you can't write a story that pleases yourself, you will never please the public. But in writing the story forget the public. ~ O. Henry

Fear is the short road to death and this world,
Changed by the flux of decay:
Survival is the exception for weary men.

From the new book The Waning ~ Ellen Mae Franklin

I don't ever want to lose sight of how short my time is here. And I don't ever want to forget that resistance must be its own reward, since resistance, at least within the life span of the resistors, almost always fails. I don't ever want to forget, even with whatever personal victories I achieve, even in the victories we achieve as a people or a nation, that the larger story of America and the world probably does not end well. Our story is a tragedy. I know it sounds odd, but that belief does not depress me. It focuses me. After all, I am an atheist and thus do not believe anything, even a strongly held belief, is destiny. And if tragedy is to be proven wrong, if there really is hope out there, I think it can only be made manifest by remembering the cost of it being proven right. No one - not our fathers, not our police, and not our gods - is coming to save us. The worst really is possible. My aim is to never be caught, as the rappers say, acting like it can't happen. And my ambition is to write both in defiance of tragedy and in blindness of its possibility, to keep screaming into the waves - just as my ancestors did. ~ Ta-Nehisi Coates

Ah, typical writing day? Well, I tend to do e-mail and the business stuff of writing more in the morning while my brain wakes up and then write more in the afternoon, sometimes from about 11 until 5, or 12 until 5. If a story is driving me nuts, I'll work more in the evenings, but usually I try not to do that. That's family time. ~ Shiloh Walker

Characters who are absolutely sure about what they do, who plunge ahead without fear, are not that interesting. We don't go through life that way. In reality, we have doubts just like everyone else.
Bringing your Lead's doubts to the surface in your plot pulls the reader deeper into the story, and this is an excellent way to coax the reader to lose himself in the story world you're about to create. ~ James Scott Bell

If you remain unsettled by a piece of writing, it means you are not watching the story from the outside; you've already taken a step towards it. ~ Daniel Day-Lewis

I'm going to marry my novels and have little short stories for children. ~ Jack Kerouac

He described to her the house he had built for himself, in outside appearance a shack, but delightful inside, at least to him. A sleeping loft with a little round window. Everything he needed right where he could put his hand to it, out in the open, nothing in cupboards. A short walk from the house he had a bathtub sunk in the earth, in the middle of a bed of sweet herbs. He would carry hot water to it by the pailful and lounge there under the stars, even in the winter. He grew vegetables, and shared them with the deer.
(From the story "Powers") ~ Alice Munro

Why is it that women are the only ones who will write perfect men into fiction? It's strange. If a man portrayed his fictional men as archangels, the feminists would throw back their heads and howl, "UNFAIR!" but we women will create our own Mr. Darcy's and Mr. Knightley's and defy anyone who would point out their unrealistic points. The men aren't the ones crazy about Pride and Prejudice. Obviously they don't find perfect men realistic and honest enough to bother reading about. We don't write perfect women characters, do we? No. Our women all have bad tempers, or resentful hearts, or scabby pasts, or hidden fears--things that make them real. It's because we're easy on ourselves and aren't trying to boast perfection because we know we don't measure up. Then why do we hold men to a different standard?..... I'd caution all writers to make sure that your male "hero" in your story has his own flaws. You don't want a one-dimensional character. You don't want a perfect man that will drive away other men from reading the book.

Look to the men in your life. The men around you. Look to your brothers and fathers and pastors and neighbors. Your uncles and the guy down the street. Goodness--look to Taylor the Latte Boy if you must, but let's cast aside the Perfect-Man syndrome. ~ Rachel Heffington

Borges said there are only four stories to tell: a love story between two people, a love story between three people, the struggle for power and the voyage. All of us writers rewrite these same stories ad infinitum. ~ Paulo Coelho

There was something vaguely sad about the rock. It was as old as it looked, standing weathered and lonely amidst the stretch of sand, and its thoughts were quiet as it listened to the waves. ~ Chew Chia Shao Wei

I'll tell you a story, far, far from here where blades of grass are fluent in sentient knowledge and trees are a mandala of prayer. ~ Carolyn Riker

It was difficult, and yet I was very eager to do it. It was a really odd thing. I really wanted to do that story. I really wanted to write the death of Captain Kirk. I really wanted to do it in the movie. ~ Ronald D. Moore

Fanscination is what keeps a writer going. To be able to write, a writer has to be fascinated about a particular something that becomes the idea of the story ~ Ika Natassa

Kids, if anything, are harder to write for because they are a more discerning audience. They will not stay with you if you go off on a tangent or if you give them extraneous information that doesn't serve the story. You really have to tell a tight story. You have to give them humor and suspense and believable characters. All those things that adults want too, but you have to be really on your game when you're writing for kids. ~ Rick Riordan

We need to cherish Father Sky and honor Mother Earth.Every THING has a purpose. Every ONE has worth. (Short story entitled THE PUZZLE, found in a book, Foxleaf Anthology, collection of works from authors in the Upper Cumberland, TN) ~ KoKo Nervelli

If you end your story, it's a static work of art, a finite circle. But if you don't, it belongs to anyone's imagination. It stays alive forever. ~ Jodi Picoult

I hate being bored when I read a story. Even a well-trod theme can be made fresh by a different perspective or fresh writing. ~ Ellen Datlow

An idea for a story can be anything. The sky is not the limit, the limit is beyond it. ~ Chrys Fey

That's the funny thing about writing your life story. You start out trying to remember dates and times and names. You think it's about facts, your life; that what you'll look back on and remember are the successes and failures, the time line of your youth and middle age, but that isn't it at all. Love. Family. Laughter. That's what I remember when it's all said and done. ~ Kristin Hannah

If you're writing primarily for one person besides yourself, I'd advise you pay very close attention to that person's opinion (I know one fellow who says he writes mostly for someone who's been dead fifteen years, but the majority of us aren't in that position). And if what you hear makes sense, then make the changes. You can't let the whole world into your story, but you can let in the ones that matter the most. And you should. ~ Stephen King

In Hollywood, they think they know it all. You, as a writer, are essentially an outsider. Novelists and short-story writers, especially. ~ Ray Bradbury

What I try to do is write from the inside out. I really try to jump into the world of the film and the characters, try to imagine myself in that world rather than imagining it as a film I'm watching onscreen. Sometimes, that means I'm discovering things the way the audience will, with character and story. ~ Christopher Nolan

I love stories, but writing fiction is another craft and I don't feel as if I have it. ~ Joan Larkin

I began writing fiction because it was the only way to tell all the intricacies of a real-life spy story. ~ David Ignatius

Dad used to say a story was worth writing if it made a difference to even one person. ~ Jeanette Ingold

As a writer, I like the list of "things to strive for" that Richard Yates kept above his typewriter:
genuine clarity
genuine feeling
the right word
the exact English sentence
the eloquent detail
the rigorous dramatization of story ~ Richard Yates

So why is Chinese social networking booming despite the censorship? Part of the reason is the Chinese language. Posts on Twitter and Twitter clones such as Weibo are limited to 140 characters. In English that comes to about 20 words or a sentence with a short link - in effect, a headline. But in Chinese you can write a whole paragraph or tell a whole story in 140 characters. One Chinese tweet is equal to 3.5 English tweets. In some ways, Weibo (which means "microblog" in Chinese) is more like Facebook than Twitter. As far as the Chinese are concerned, if something is not on Weibo, it does not exist. ~ Michael Anti

You may believe in God, but never forget - it's God who believes in you. Every morning that the sun rises and you get to rise? That's God saying He believes in you, that He believes in the story He's writing through you. He believes in you as a gift the world needs. ~ Ann Voskamp

A story rises from the springs of creation, from the pure will to be; it tells itself; I takes its own course, finds its own way, its own words; and the writer's job is to be its medium. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

Works of art are not so much finished as abandoned. Perhaps poems can be perfect. A short-short story might even be perfectible, as effective and enjoyable for one reader as the next. But novels and other book-length narratives are great rambling things that always contain some flaws. For works of any length, there comes a point when your continued tinkering won't improve the whole, but will just trade one set of problems for another. ~ Bruce Holland Rogers

Poetry is its own medium; it's very different than writing prose. Poetry can talk in an imagistic sense, it has particular ways of catching an environment. ~ Story Musgrave

You must remember that your story matters. What you write has the power to save a life, sometimes that life is your own. ~ Stalina Goodwin

The real reason why so many artists now take to politics, 'commitment' and so on is that they are rushing into a discipline, any discipline at all, which will save them from the poison of the word 'artist' used by the enemy.
I remember very clearly the moments in which that novel was born. The pulse beat, violently; afterwards, when I knew I would write, I worked out what I would write. The 'subject' was almost immaterial. Yet now what interests me is precisely this - why did I not write an account of what had happened, instead of shaping a 'story' which had nothing to do with the material that fuelled it. Of course, the straight, simple, formless account would not have been a 'novel', and would not have got published, but I was genuinely not interested in 'being a writer' or even in making money. I am not talking now of that game writers play with themselves when writing, the psychological game - that written incident came from that real incident, that character was transposed from that one in life, this relationship was the psychological twin of that. I am simply asking myself: Why a story at all - not that it was a bad story, or untrue, or that it debased anything. Why not, simply, the truth? ~ Doris Lessing

Nightclub City tells the behind-the-scenes story of Manhattan's glamorous nightlife at its peak. Packed with colorful characters, terrific original research, and an unusually accessible writing style, Nightclub City is a gritty social history of America's most glitzy fantasies. ~ Debby Applegate

It's the thing I struggle with every day: the mental diligence and stamina needed to sit in front of the computer, open the file, start writing and to keep doing so, word after word, until I've created the next story. A combination of learning disability and chronic health issues make that the hardest thing for me. ~ Nalo Hopkinson

Well, how did you die, then?" the old man finally asked.
"Die?" Matthew threw back. "Are you crazy? I'm not dead. I'm just very late. ~ J. Tonzelli

One of the things I've found most challenging about writing a multibook series is keeping it fresh and evolving while still delivering the familiarity that keeps longtime fans devoted to the characters and story world. ~ Tina St. John

The more I know about God, I am convinced He likes to read books and authors are His librarians. Every soul is a story waiting to be read. ~ Shannon L. Alder

When I started writing 'Luck in the Shadows,' I just wanted to create an adventure story. ~ Lynn Flewelling

The germ of a story is a new and simple element introduced into an existing situation or mood. ~ Malcolm Cowley

Yes, the saint was underrated quite a bit, then, mostly by people who didn't like things that were ineffable ...
... a lot of people don't like things that are unearthly, the things of this earth are good enough for them, and they don't mind telling you so. "If he'd just go out and get a job, like everybody else, then he could be saintly all day long ... "
- from "The Temptations of St. Anthony," by Donald Barthelme ~ Donald Barthelme

I remember clearly the afternoon that she stood at the corner beside the door of the tourist centre in Gdansk. ~ You Jin

I still think that of all the people doing top fiction today, John D. MacDonald is the best.He was my model as a kid. If there are people out there that want to write, all you need to do is read 20 of his stories to get an idea what it takes to make a story kick over. ~ Stephen King

My writing process is such that a story will be in my head for awhile, and I'll start making notes on my computer. I create character sheets that include a character's past, fears, goals and ambitions. ~ Tracie Peterson

I'm trying to read/edit my story as if I have no existing knowledge of the story, no investment in it, no sense of what Herculean effort went into writing page 23, no pretensions as to why the dull patch on page 4 is important for the fireworks that will happen on page 714. ~ George Saunders

Life is a sacred story. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita