Parker Conrad Quotes

You find the most important thing that really grabs you, and put it right up top. Don't bury the lead. Put it at the top. Best thing to do. Never go wrong that way. It's an immutable law of journalism. It just always works.

You have to have a strong title. It's got to say something.

The headline is the most important element in most advertisements. It is the telegram which decides the reader whether to read the copy.

Reading isn't about managing expectations. In certain ways, writing is. You're trying to send signals early in a book about what might be coming later, but I think worrying about the kind of chatter around a book is something I try and stay as far away from when I'm reading.

I am very lucky that I get to tell stories for a living. I love being able to grab people's attention, to keep them turning the pages, to make them stay awake all night. I want to stir the pulse, yes, but also to stir the heart. I hope 'The Woods' does that.

I did my English A level in England, and we studied Shakespeare. I had great, great high school teachers, and we parsed the text within an inch of its life.

I have one rule when adapting any text: nothing gets added; all the words are the original author's own. But in the ordering and recreation of the story, I can do as I please, and to me, the heart and the point of 'Dracula' is appetite.

The bottom line always remains the same: What is the basic humanity of the character? How do I make them resonate with the reader?

What makes a story is how well it manages to connect with the reader, the visceral effect it has.

The question of likability is a bit of a puzzler for me. You know, I don't write people with likability in mind. It's more whether or not I find them compelling.

The author always knows more than the reader does at the start of a novel, and gradually, they share that knowledge with the reader - that's storytelling.

We don't experience our lives as plots. If I asked you to tell me what your last week was like, you're not really gonna give me plot. You're gonna give me sort of linked narrative. And I wanted to see how do we bring that into fiction without losing the reader.

[Newspaper] editors print everything they possibly can in large capital letters.

The most important part of acting is listening. So always act like you’re listening.

I think a lot of people want me to be like the characters in the books: they want that kind of congruence.

When somebody's face-to-face with you saying, 'I may not have been here had I not read your book,' how do you respond to that? The first several times I traveled, it was almost too much. I was totally grateful, but emotionally, it was really hard.

I often use nameless places in my work as a way of allowing the readers to create more of the novel and to make it potentially about their experiences, what they know, a city that they have perhaps seen on television.

'Arcadia' is obviously a play that's got interesting things in it that are perhaps quite hard to grasp.

That was the most important thing to me: making sure 'Gardner Elliot' was likeable and funny and interesting. I took my time before filming to chat with Peter, the director, to create this character.

If you can find interesting ways to be clear, you're really onto something.

What a newspaper needs in its news, in its headlines, and on its editorial page is terseness, humor, descriptive power, satire, originality, good literary style, clever condensation, and accuracy, accuracy, accuracy!

I'm always so inspired by Jeff Eastin's writing.

I love stories. But I don't distinguish so much between a short story and a novel. Personally, when I sit down to read a novel or a Chekhov story, I'm seeking the same thing: I'm seeking that same rich portrayal of life in words.

I'm not sure if a writer should talk about themes. Themes arrive out of the deeper structure and concerns, but to me, the main thing is getting it down right, writing about specific characters in specific predicaments, and finding a way to be true to the story itself, not only in the first burst of draft but in the revision, too.

This is the beauty of fiction. We may not like these characters, but we inhabit them.