Charles de Lint Quotes

If you can't figure out how to make the beginning of your book compelling, you're probably not writing a compelling book.

I went back to the notion of story, which is always a good thing to have if you're trying to get people to pay attention to a book and pick up information along the way.

Origin stories are really important to me. I just like that sort of stuff and I feel like it makes a lot of sense to the guys, who they are. If you don't have that stuff, it's kind of a one dimensional version of it.

No, the thing is, we all love storytelling, and as a writer you get to tell stories all the time.

Storytelling is storytelling. Good stories need compelling characters and interesting conflicts. That's the bottom line no matter what medium you're writing for.

The parallels between a stage and a book are compelling. You, like all authors, create 'characters' in a 'setting' who speak 'dialogue' encased in 'scenes.' Most importantly, you - like the playwright - have an 'audience.'

Both types of books - fiction and nonfiction - are a search for story. As a writer and a reader, there's nothing I crave more than a good story!

Basically, all novelists should want to tell a story, and if they don't want to, they shouldn't be novelists. I think story-telling is important and underrated.

'Junkhearts' is a great story.

To me, it all comes down to things being character-driven. It's hard for me to look beyond that. CG and all this cool stuff - so be it. But to me, it pretty much begins and ends with character-driven plots rather than technologically-driven plots.

To write a story is to create a world of your own.

Every character comes with its own challenges.

The writing is only ever the attractive thing about a part. And also if all the elements within the writing come together - the character and the structure and the narrative - if they are all there then you become excited.

The heart responds to the conflict within a story.

All you need to know about plotting is twofold. 1. Give your characters goals. 2. Don't let them reach those goals.

It's one thing to not want an evil-sorcerer type villain in your story, but it's another thing to avoid having any sort of antagonist at all. A story without an antagonist gets weird pretty quick.

It starts with the writing. We have to think of all these characters - we have to treat them all equally. We have to think of them as having an interior life and having motivations. When I'm drawing female characters, I'm looking for that. I'm looking for subtext. I'm looking for ways to make the reader relate to them in a way that goes beyond the pure aesthetic value. You know, just drawing an attractive woman really gets kind of boring after a while.

Conflict is the soul of literature.

When a novelist or screenwriter is looking for a subject, the element he's seeking is conflict. Conflict makes drama. Conflict produces great characters and memorable scenes. So war is a natural topic.

Writing fiction means putting a lot of what you believe about the world at risk, because you have to follow your characters.

I believe that everybody needs to tell their story - to be heard, to be seen, to be acknowledged, to be understood. We all want that, deep down inside - and writing a book is a great way to make sense of your own experience and to share it with others.

It's very hard to write about that which is always beautiful and pleasant and good. You don't get anywhere with it. There's no friction in it. There's no trouble. You have to have trouble. Somebody's got to get in trouble, or no one wants to read it.

I make no distinction between writing and storytelling; I've always wanted to tell stories.

I felt like if I could get the epiphany out of the way in my drafting process, through my eighth or tenth draft, then that can just be part of how I've assembled the character, and then we can move on and move forward with it. In general, I don't ever want to feel smarter than my characters, because I just feel like that's not a great way to write a story.

It can be hard to write a skillfully entertaining fiction, but a great book wants to be more, and wants more from us.