Description

A writer should not be an interpreter. He should not try to explain the facts of life. He should only describe them, make them alive as possible.

from Conversations with Isaac Bashevis Singer

Writing Advice: Seduced by Language

"The best of good writing will entice us into subjects and knowledge we would have declared were of no interest to us until we were seduced by the language they were dressed in."

--from Sol Stein in Chapter One, Stein on Writing: Master Editor of Some of the Most Successful Writers of Our Century Shares His Craft Techniques and Strategies

Telling the Truth

If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people.(Virginia Woolf)

A Character's Change/Resolution

"In the best stories, the odyssey from complication to resolution changes the character profoundly. In fact, the resolution often results not directly from the action but from a growing enlightenment -- often a suddenflash of insight -- as the character finally realizes what he has to do to solve the problem.

"Screenwriters often call this flash of insight or self realization, a 'plot point.' Screenwriters talk about two plot points, the first being thecomplication and the second coming near the end of the story, where the character finally fully perceives the nature of his problem and, as a result, sees how to solve it. But since we are discussing complication and resolution form, we have the need to refer to only one plot point, the second, or point of insight....

"Once you identify the plot point, you know you have found a story in which the character"s struggle leaves him a better, more mature individual. You have thus tied the character irrevocably to plot, and you have a viable story....

"If your story meets all the criteria it will, in the language of editors, 'work.' That means it will consist of a real person who is confronted with a significant problem, who struggles diligently to solve that problem, and who ultimately succeeds -- and in doing so becomes a different character....

"But the deeper satisfaction comes when the reader learns with thecharacter. The reader, like the character, thus becomes a better and wiser person; the story, in the final analysis, is an artificial experience. It doesn"t moralize but, like all experience, it teaches."


Writing for Story: Craft Secrets of Dramatic Nonfiction by a Two-Time Pulitzer Prize Winner by Jon Franklin (pages 89-90)

Staying Close to the Edge

I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center. (Kurt Vonnegut)

Humor

Whenever a person has wit, there's always a victim of this wit. He always makes fun of somebody, and it is always a human being. You don't say that a dog is funny or a horse is funny. No one will say that a rock or a river is funny. If you say that a table is funny, you make fun of the carpenter who made the table. Actually, humor is a criticism of human behavior.

from Conversations with Isaac Bashevis Singer

Literature and Entertainment

I don't believe in forced reading, where students are forced by professors or they compel themselves to read. Since I believe that literature is basically entertaining, the quantity is as important as the quality.

from Conversations with Isaac Bashevis Singer