Story Writing Quotes: top 100 famous quotes about Story Writing

Story Writing Quotes & Sayings

Happy to read and share the best inspirational Story Writing quotes, sayings and quotations on Wise Famous Quotes.

I never know, when I start writing a story, what's going to happen, or how it will all get sorted out. — Jacqueline Woodson

When you do enough research, the story almost writes itself. Lines of development spring loose and you'll have choices galore. — Robert McKee

Writing is hard work. Attempting to write a decent story is friggin exhausting! — Veronica Purcell

The things I like to find in a story are punch and poetry. — Sean O Faolain

If I knew a story page by page before I started writing it, I just wouldn't do it. The process of discovery is really important for my own enjoyment. — Steve Toltz

When you are writing a novel, you aren't making it up. The story is already there. You just have to find it. — Thomas Harris

Only write a story that only you can write. — Alysha Speer

When you are falling short in vocabulary to explain the emotion in your story.Than you are writing the right story — Tushar Upreti

Writing the story of your own life is a bit like drilling your own teeth. — Gloria Swanson

Whether we like it or not, life has a lot of drama and pain. But God is writing a great story. Are we going to let Him? Are we going to trust Him? — Beth Moore

When you write, you are telling a story ... to yourself. When you revise, you are telling a story to yourself ... over and over again. — Kai Strand

The story is always better than your ability to write it. — Robin McKinley

I like terrific writing, but I also like a terrific story. My favorite books have both, and they're by contemporary, commercial American writers. — Lisa Scottoline

Uncertainty is as good a way as any to kill a story. — Sidney Zion

Question marks are shaped like hooks for a reason: they will hook the reader and drag them deeper into the story — Chuck Wendig

Somebody gets into trouble, then gets out of it again. People love that story. They never get tired of it. — Kurt Vonnegut

You should be writing for the love of the story, and when it comes time to return to the manuscript, everything else belongs behind a closed door. — Michael Koryta

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

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

Don't let the poison of the past spoil a fruitful future. — A.D. Posey

Our willingness to write truthfully brings the story to life. — Alan Watt

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

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

Have a short story feature two situations, and then let them solve each other. — Gene Wolfe

I start with a tingle, a kind of feeling of the story I will write. Then come the characters, and they take over, they make the story. — Karen Blixen

The truth, or success, of any writer's story lies partly in its specificity and its emotional honesty. — Gail Caldwell

Not knowing stuff - like how your story ends before you start writing - is the seed of a lot of writer's block. — Dan Alatorre

When we are in love, we are convinced nobody else will do. But as time goes, others do do, and often do do, much much better. — Coco J. Ginger

There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you. — Maya Angelou

I am content when writing short stories. — Sarah Mazucci

I know have lived, so many times, that the only thing I have left to remember is my writing, cause every single moment in life it's already written. — Piroska Rodriguez

When writing the story of your life, don't let anyone else hold the pen. — Annisa Widi Astuty

Storytelling keeps life going. — A.D. Posey

Literature, the act of writing, affirms life, however dark the story it tells. — Marty Rubin

Basically, writers write because they have something to say...Everyone has a story in them, writers merely decide to share it with the world... — Virginia Alison

Writing a nonfiction story is like cracking a safe. It seems impossible at the beginning, but once you're in, you're in. — Rich Cohen

The first draft is just you telling yourself the story. — Terry Pratchett

I really like comedy. There's always a choice, when you're writing: you can either go for the joke or you can go for the story, the important stuff. — David Chase

A great story can change the world. — Stewart Stafford

A quote is a story, suspended in a sentence and treasured through time. — Ryan Lilly

You are your own journey. — A.D. Posey

A true storyteller is really good at writing himself into a corner and then finding a way out of that corner — Michael Chabon

You want in all cases for the story to get through the writing. — Alice Munro

For me, the main inspiration to write a story or novel is the voice of its central character, or the narrative voice of the story itself. — Scott Bradfield

The biggest problem is that people want to tell the whole story, and they write letters that are way longer than anything I could possibly run. — Emily Yoffe

Try writing an entire story with only a thousand words at your disposal. It's a terrific lesson in economy and precession. — Darynda Jones

A photographer is like a writer ... you're writing with your lens so make sure you tell a good story. — Habib Umar Bin Hafiz

If you don't think screenwriting is a work of art, good luck in your life without a soul. — A.D. Posey

Writing is a lonely act. When two writers come together to write a horror story it can be crazy. You can't step on a mine and hope it doesn't explode. — Ben Oliveira

A film that is a true work of art transcends theatre and heartwarmingly changes lives. — A.D. Posey

I remember my dad working with me on breaking down my script and writing out a back story for my character and all that stuff. — Jason Bateman

The more of those little light bulbs that can turn on the better. Eventually you'll have enough to light up a movie screen. — A.D. Posey

I'm pretty disciplined to keep the momentum of a story going by writing everyday, even if it's only a couple paragraphs or a page or two. — James Rollins

If you're going to have a complicated story, you must work to a map; otherwise you can never make a map of it afterwards. — J.R.R. Tolkien

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

Don't write too much. Concentrate your sweat on one story, rather than dissipate it over a dozen. — Jack London

You're with you 24/7; you must love you the most. — A.D. Posey

The makers of the short story have rarely been good novelists. — V.S. Pritchett

When you're writing a novel, you're still telling a story. But you're telling it very differently. It's a craft like anything else. — Howard Gordon

One wants to tell a story, like Scheherezade, in order not to die. It's one of the oldest urges in mankind. It's a way of stalling death. — Carlos Fuentes

Tell the readers a story! Because without a story, you are merely using words to prove you can string them together in logical sentences. — Anne McCaffrey

We write to strengthen our soul and the spirit of other souls. — Lailah Gifty Akita

No individual element in your story, including the hero, will work unless you first create it and define it in relation to all the other elements. — John Truby

Tighten your prose so the story flows. — Anna Dobritt

I'm actually writing a short story about a photographer who went completely insane trying to take a close up photo of the horizon. — Steven Wright

You are not the writer. You are the story being told from The Writer. — Richard Wisniewski

Be expectant ... God is not finished writing your story! — Joy Marino

Life is a sacred story. — Lailah Gifty Akita

Writing in the first person helps to make clear the author's role in constructing rather than discovering the story/knowledge. — Gayle Letherby

I'm sure it's like you writing a story. If you don't care, how can the reader? — Cecelia Ahern

I keep dying and hoping you notice me. But you're too busy living. — F.K. Preston

writing is an intensely solitary endeavor, but a story isn't truly heard until many hands have held it. — Elizabeth J. Church

Listen to what speaks to your heart. — A.D. Posey

I find that writing is the silver lining of life, allowing me to transform vexing experiences into fresh story ideas...after much vexed venting. — Laura Quinn

Only half the story is true. The rest is necessary. — John Yau

I've evolved in my writing to tell a more emotional story - my publisher, Random House, has urged that. — Alan Furst

My biggest lesson ... was to try and create narrators that were believable ... so the listener becomes really invested in the story or the song. — Kristian Bush

Every painting tells a story. — A.D. Posey

Do you wait for things to happen, or do you make them happen yourself? I believe in writing your own story. — Charlotte Eriksson

Every word Martone sets down, finally, a choice that limits the universe, their trail across the page a fossil record of some life's life-story. — Michael Martone

Every day's to-do list.
1.) Listen
2.) Trust
3.) Do — A.D. Posey

In commercial fiction especially, everything in the story usually contributes directly to the plot The shorter the story, the truer this is — Nancy Kress

Learning is essential for living the life you love. — A.D. Posey

Writing a story is like getting to share a piece of every daydream you've ever had. — Giuseppe Bianco

I love the process of creating a story that will resonate in my readers lives ~ either inspiring them, educating them, or entertaining them. — Kathryn Albright

I keep the description basic as it allows you to mould the story around your life. — Airam

I'm just writing a story that I want to read. — Jean M. Auel

The only thing worth thinking about, when I write a story, is whether I like it, whether I want to write it, whether it excites me. — Theodora Goss

The characters tell their story - I am merely the tool used to record it — Marti Melville

The blank page is the canvas on which a writer paints a story. — Stephanie Ayers

Crying cleanses the soul. — A.D. Posey

The flower doth not worry, and the tree doth not waver. — A.D. Posey

Cry while writing it, and readers will cry while reading it. — A.D. Posey

The key to writing successful YA is to keep the adults out of the story as much as possible. — Beverly Cleary

Writing is an act of discovery in which you peel back the layers of the story as you write it down. — Matt Forbeck

I used to love to make things - you couldn't drag me away for dinner because I was always writing a story or something. — Fiona Apple

A first-rate story is easily killed by second-rate design. — Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Accept nothing. Challenge everything. — A.D. Posey

I think the job of writing and literature is to encourage each one of us to believe that we're living in a story. — Naomi Shihab Nye

Places are extremely important when writing a long story because place shapes a character. — Tabitha King