Because every
story begins
with words

Eight secrets to writing a low-budget movie

Video: Eight secrets to writing a low-budget movie.

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Writers aren’t people exactly. Or, if they’re any good, they’re a whole lot of people trying so hard to be one person.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

No writer has ever yet been known to hang himself as long as he had another chapter left.

Thomas Wolfe

The road to ignorance is paved with good editors.

George Bernard Shaw

Plot is, I think, the good writer’s last resort and the dullard’s first choice.

Stephen King

If you start with a bang, you won’t end with a whimper.

T.S. Eliot

It took me fifteen years to discover I had no talent for writing, but I couldn’t give it up because by that time I was too famous.

Robert Benchley

A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.

G.K. Chesterton

It always comes down to characters, and individual stories about courage.

Steven Bochco

I have a structured songwriting process. I start with the music and try to come up with musical ideas, then the melody, then the hook, and the lyrics come last.

John Legend

Don’t annoy an author, you’ll end up in their book and you won’t look good.

Lawrence Wray

Just don’t be boring!

Robert Liebmann

In Hollywood, the woods are full of people that learned to write but evidently can’t read. If they could read their stuff, they’d stop writing.

Will Rogers

I get up in the morning, torture a typewriter until it screams, then stop.

Clarence Budington Kelland

A true author, no matter the medium, is an artist with godlike knowledge of his subject, and the proof of his authorship is that his pages smack of authority.

Robert McKee

The first chapter sells the book; the last chapter sells the next book.

Mickey Spillane

Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of, but do it in private and wash your hands afterwards.

Robert A. Heinlein

Thank your readers and the critics who praise you, and then ignore them. Write for the most intelligent, wittiest, wisest audience in the universe: Write to please yourself.

Harlan Ellison

Keep a small can of WD-40 on your desk — away from any open flames — to remind yourself that if you don’t write daily, you will get rusty.

George Singleton

Writing has laws of perspective, of light and shade, just as painting does, or music. If you are born knowing them, fine. If not, learn them. Then rearrange the rules to suit yourself.

Truman Capote Quote

Good instincts usually tell you what to do long before your head has figured it out.

Michael Burke