If you want to captivate your readers, a good beginning is essential. Even more so, however, is the story needs to continue to hold them. When the plot meanders and wanders from place to place without much direction or motivation for the characters. When you look at each scene, consider what purpose it has for…
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Think of your main characters as dinner guests. Would your friends want to spend ten hours with the characters you’ve created? Your characters can be loveable, or they can be evil, but they’d better be compelling. ― Po Bronson
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It’s important to create a sense of culture even if it is just a fantasy, and the best way to do that is to look at a real human culture and see what makes it cohesive. – Laine Taylor
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The world doesn’t fully make sense until the writer has secured his version of it on the page. And the act of writing is strangely more lifelike than life. – Betsy Lerner
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The purpose of a storyteller is not to tell you how to think, but to give you questions to think upon. – Brandon Sanderson
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Charlie, there are two kinds of thieves in this world: The ones who steal to enrich their lives, and those who steal to define their lives. Don’t be the latter. Makes you miss out on what’s really important in this life. – Italian Job
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It’s like a piece of music; you never lose sight of the theme. Each scene pushes off to the next like music builds and you can almost hear the next chord progression, so it has a strict structure, which is very compelling. – David Strathairn
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Writing the opening lines of a story is a bit like starting to ski at the steepest part of the hill. You must have all your skills under control from the first instant. – Marion Dane Bauer
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Good description is a learned skill, one of those primary reasons you cannot succeed unless you read a lot and write a lot. It’s not just a question of how-to, you see; it’s also a question of how much to. Reading will help you answer how much, and only reams of writing will help you with the how. You can learn only by doing. – Stephen King
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If history were taught in the form of stories, it would never be forgotten. – Rudyard Kipling
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