Victoria Aveyard Quotes

Fantasy is totally wide open; all you really have to do is follow the rules you've set. But if you're writing about science, you have to first learn what you're writing about.

For the traditional fantasies, a lot more of my research comes from reading rather than doing. I like my worlds to feel real, so I do a lot of world building research.

That's really the essence of what any fiction writer does. Some of it is research-based, but most of it is a really long-term, imaginative, empathetic effort to see the world the way someone whose experiences remote from yours might see it. Not every writer works that way; some writers make a wonderful career out of writing books that adhere very closely to how they view the world. The further I go with this, the more interested I get in trying to imagine my way into other perspectives that at first seem foreign to me.

Science fiction writers, I am sorry to say, really do not know anything. We can't talk about science, because our knowledge of it is limited and unofficial, and usually our fiction is dreadful.

I have always regarded historical fiction and fantasy as sisters under the skin, two genres separated at birth.

I'm thinking my next book should be set on a tropical island, which will obviously require days, even weeks of meticulous research, but I'm prepared to make that sacrifice. That's just the sort of dedicated writer I am.

The greatest part of a writer's time is spent in reading in order to write. A man will turn over half a library to make a book.

I like novelists who can create other interesting worlds.

I think that as a poet, I am always concerned about history and baring witness to history. But so often, it's through the research that I do, the reading.

In the act of reading, especially reading fiction, where a world is being created, all kinds of matters of belief come into play.

At least for me, it takes more knowledge to write fiction than nonfiction. At least about someplace that I begin with a lot of ignorance about.

I don't really write plots. I use history as the engine that drives everything.

All I've really ever done is write since I was 17, so I don't know anything about anything. For me to do a novel, I have to talk to people who know things. And what keeps me in suspense is that I am a crime aficionado.

I'm not well-versed in the science fiction world. I'm hoping that I'll get more opportunities in it because you get to create a new world.

Fantasy is fantasy. It's fiction. It's not meant to be a textbook. I don't believe in letting research overwhelm the fiction. That's a danger of science fiction in particular, as opposed to fantasy. A lot of writers forget that what they're doing is supposed to be art.

I'm used to something where you have to create an entire world, and I do like that process. I like getting the audience to believe that outside of the frame of your television set, there's a whole real world that exists that is different from your day-to-day reality.

I'm a great believer in the novelist being 'on the scene,' reporting, traveling, meeting all sorts of people.

I read and write speculative fiction because I want to go someplace really different.

Writing fiction is like remembering what never happened.

I want to write some books. Books that have nothing to do with music, just some fiction type of books for a whole different audience of people.

I read anything that’s going to be interesting. But you don’t know what it is until you’ve read it. Somewhere in a book on the history of false teeth there’ll be the making of a novel.

I always knew I wanted to write really imaginative fiction - fiction that was very different from my real life.

If I write nothing but fiction for some time I begin to get stupid, and to feel rather as if it had been a long meal of sweets; then history is a rest, for research or narration brings a different part of the mind into play.

There is poetry in fiction. If you cannot see it and feel it when you write, you need to step back and examine what you are doing wrong. If you have not figured out how to write a simple declarative sentence and make it sing with that poetry, you are not yet ready to write an entire book.

Books are great for if you want to work on the craft of writing for yourself, or, you know, to write novels or indie films, stuff like that.