Nancy Kress Quotes

I don't want my readers slowed down by long passages of narrative.

Good writing does not come from verbiage but from words.

You know what writers say about their long books: If I had another year, the book would be half as long.

A lot of writers fall in love with their sentences or their construction of sentences, and sometimes that's great, but not everybody is Gabriel Garcia Marquez or James Joyce. A lot of people like to pretend that they are, and they wind up not giving people a good read or enlightening them.

As for dialogue, I think it keeps things moving to cut to the chase.

One mistake with beginners in writing is, that they think it important to spin out something long. It is a great deal better not to write more than a page or two, unless you have something to say, and can write it correctly.

While I admire writers who are able to write with a vitality based on order and action, I work in a different vein. I often feel that if I can get the language just right, the language hypnotizes the reader.

I think in most cases, unless you're writing about a character who is garrulous, you say what you've got to say and then get out. Those little conjunctions, those little turnaround words help you do it. That's the way I like to write: I get rid of things rather than add them.

So the writer who breeds more words than he needs, is making a chore for the reader who reads.

Prose is architecture, not interior decoration, and the Baroque is over.

My stories are very compact. I want them to say the most complex things in the simplest way.

Some people write a thank you note for a gift, and it's three pages long, and some people write a thank you note, and it's five sentences - that's me. I like to pare away words because I don't want to waste anyone's time.

Be prepared to fall out of love with your words. I'm still too verbose at times.

I want my stories to be understood and enjoyed by anyone, so I need 'beta-readers' who will tell me when the plot is working or not working, and when my writing is concise or vague.

I'm tired of wasting letters when punctuation will do, period.

Too much detail can bog down any story. Enough with the history of gunpowder, the geology of Hawaii, the processes of whaling, and cactus and tumbleweed.

I'm fighting against the bad poet who is prone to using too many words.

I try to leave out the parts readers skip.

One false word, one extra word, and somebody's thinking about how they have to buy paper towels at the store. Brevity is very important. If you're going to be longwinded, it should be for a purpose. Not just because you like your words.

One of the biggest problems for beginning writers is this need to over-explain.

In composing, as a general rule, run your pen through every other word you have written; you have no idea what vigor it will give your style.

Directing my own writing, I see that I talk way too much, and everything can happen much sooner, with much less said about it.

One tends to write beyond what's needed.

It's not difficult for me to put my feelings into written form. I try to be concise and to go direct to the subject. This is what people like about my work, and what the critics hate.

Wordiness is a sickness of American writing. Too many words dilute and blur ideas.