Thank you for listening to another year of Writing Roots!

​For all forms, writing dialogue is almost like writing music. I pay close attention to rhythms and tones. - Sefi Atta

Engaging in the literary world and discovering what books are out there is always beneficial. Consider the comp hunt both a rite of passage and a learning opportunity—and may the odds be ever in your favor. - Star Wuerdemann

Good writing is good writing. In many ways, it’s the audience and their expectations that define a genre. A reader of literary fiction expects the writing to illuminate the human condition, some aspect of our world and our role in it. A reader of genre fiction likes that, too, as long as it doesn’t get in the way of the story. - Rosemary Clement-Moore

In writing fiction, the more fantastic the tale, the plainer the prose should be. Don’t ask your readers to admire your words when you want them to believe your story. - Ben Bova

Since childhood, I've been faithful to monsters. I have been saved and absolved by them, because monsters, I believe, are patron saints of our blissful imperfection, and they allow and embody the possibility of failing. - Guillermo del Toro

World-building can be as complicated or as simple as your story needs it to be. - Moriah Richard

With third-person limited, we want to ensure that the character’s beliefs are reflected in the narrator’s description of things. Not by necessarily telling us what the character thinks, but by coloring in their fictional world - setting, people, events - with the character’s perspective, informing the words selected. - Peter Mountford

In teaching writing, I’m learning new things about writing. - David B Coe

I don’t try and write strong female characters or strong male characters. I just try and write, hopefully, strong characters and sometimes they happen to be female. - JJ Abrams

I write a lot of material that I know I’ll throw away…. I have to write hundreds of pages before I get to page one. - Barbara Kingsolver

You do an awful lot of bad writing in order to do any good writing. Incredibly bad. I think it would be very interesting to make a collection of some of the worst writing by good writers. - William S Burroughs

It is not the task of the writer to 'tell all', or even decide what to leave in, but to decide what to leave out. - Caitlin R. Kiernan

I write to keep from going mad from the contradictions I find among mankind - and to work some of those contradictions out for myself. - Michel de Montaigne

I write, “Jane came into the room and sat down on the blue couch,” read that, wince, cross out “came into the room” and “down” and “blue” (Why does she have to come into the room? Can someone sit UP on a couch? Why do we care if it’s blue?) and the sentence becomes “Jane sat on the couch – ” and suddenly, it’s better. - George Saunders

Through an arbitrary problem, I had arrived at a tenet of good writing: brevity wins. - Michael Winter

The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do. - Thomas Jefferson

Making sure that the geography and timelines work is always the hardest part of writing. But you owe it to the readers to get it right. - Michael Scott

Good writing can be defined as having something to say and saying it well. - Edward Abbey

Jacques : This place... is cursed.Red : What is it with you and curses?Spivey : He ain't happy without a good curse. 'This is cursed. That is cursed. 'Red : Give it rest, will ya! - The Mummy Returns (2001)