Nancy Kress Quotes

The opening lines of a book are so important. You really need to somehow charm your reader. If you can't get her attention in the first pages, you may have lost her. There has to be an ambience.

All writers know how important a good title is. It's the first thing readers see, along with a knock-your-socks-off cover - a seductive 'come hither' for the story within.

Whatever's good about your book should be good on page 1, or very few editors are going to get to page 2.

I think that a classic style in writing tends to remove the reader one level from the immediacy of the experience. For any normal reader, I think a colloquial style makes him feel more as though he is within the action, instead of just reading about it.

Editors are more concerned with the first chapters of a book; that's what everyone reads first in the bookstore or in the online sample.

But I care about the reader, and I'm trying to keep the reader's attention for as long as I can.

When I'm writing, I don't really have much other guide than, 'As a reader, how would I respond to this?'

I want to write so well that a person is 30 or 40 pages in a book of mine... before she realizes she's reading.

The job of the first eight pages is not to have the reader want to throw the book at the wall, during the first eight pages.

But there's one thing I'm sure about. An opening line should invite the reader to begin the story. It should say: Listen. Come in here. You want to know about this.

I like my first lines short and declarative. No complicated sentences. Of course, that's not really a Scott thing. It's pretty classic grab-the-reader technique.

I can't write unless I've got the voice for a character.

I follow only one rule in my writing, and that is to be interesting. If the story is interesting to you, the writer, then it will probably be interesting to somebody else.

Technology must remain a tool. It's a great tool, but technology is the pen to write the book. It's not the book. If you have a great pen, maybe you'll write faster or it will look better, but at the end, you have something to say, or you don't.

When I write, I try not to cast in my head, because then I'm writing to a major movie star, and it picks up those ticks, and that's not what I want to do.

I've always had an ear for melodies, and they veer pop. My lyrics are more country - what I love is the storytelling and the structure, how tight the rhymes can be. But pop melodies have always been intrinsically linked to my writing style.

In the most self-protective of ways, I don't think about the reader when I'm writing - I just think about the story.

Every writer has written a spec. It's the first thing you write, and it basically stands as a means of, 'Here's an example of how I tell stories.' It's almost like a business card.

I don't usually like teen novels written in the present tense, particularly those told from a first-person viewpoint. Too many writers seem to believe that using either or both devices automatically imbues their stories with deep seriousness and a contemporary feel.

I rather envy writers who do variations on a theme. I like reading those books, but in practice, I can't do it.

Half your battle is won when the writing is good, and then you as an artist bring your personality into it.

I edit as I write and shoot. Any extra line, any pause that I know will get chopped on the editing table is done away with then and there.

Writing is so fun precisely because if you take out the right adjective, the readers can decide what kind of book is in their hands. Suspension of disbelief should not be mandatory in contemporary writing.

When you are a writer, the assist-to-turnover ratio... there are a lot more turnovers than assists.

I didn't know how to write a novel, so I sort of let it happen in waves. The only way I could write it was to think like scenes in a movie.