Lauren Mayberry Quotes

I love writing letters. In order to write a novel in first person, I think I needed an addressee.

I'm very comfortable writing in the first person; it dives into the character in a way that's difficult if you're writing in the third person.

When the narrative itself starts knocking on the glassed-in box that was your prescription for how you were going to write this novel... you have to listen to it.

I feel it's very important to let individual writers' voices come through. But the character has to be consistent.

When it comes to the form the narrative will take, whether first person, third person, or Aunt Grace's cat, I usually find that the story tells me which voice it prefers, and that often changes as I go along. And in the end it really doesn't matter as long as the author can rig those voices all in harness to pull the same load.

I can write with authority only about what I know well, which means that I end up using surface details of my own life in my fiction.

Because I write fiction, I don't write autobiography, and to me they are very different things. The first-person narrative is a very intimate thing, but you are not addressing other people as 'I' - you are inhabiting that 'I.'

I think of myself as a storyteller, and that is it.

The difficulty with telling stories about real people is you have to find a way of mixing yourself into the matter.

I love a well-plotted story. But I'm just not that kind of writer, and it's not necessarily by choice. When I manipulate plot, I feel I lose authenticity.

I was commissioned to write some romantic fiction, and I really liked doing those, and they were very instructive in terms of building characters and plots. But it never felt right for me.

I don't write autobiographically.

Usually, when I write a novel, it takes me about 100 pages to figure out the voice of the narrator.

My writing, it's mostly fiction, but I want it to feel intimate and real.

For me, the easiest thing to figure out is the story I want to tell, and the hardest thing is to figure out the voice that's gonna tell it. And that's why I finish very little.

Writing in the first person, you immediately open yourself up to the idea that there's a connection between you and the narrator.

Authenticity does matter, but only as it serves the novel's more traditional literary demands: that the fault lines be drawn where the internal life and the larger world meet.

To me, I'm a storyteller.

Writing in the first person automatically gives you a point of view.

I do better just letting the stories develop. I don't outline very well, and I can't follow it if I do. Once I've outlined it, why write the damn book?

I don't think I have a very novelistic brain. I like to read, but I don't know if I could ever write a novel.

I think all good short stories are about what it means to tell a good story.

I write in character a lot.

I'm not seeking for answers; I just want to tell stories and state my opinion.

I don't see myself as an actor. I see myself as a storyteller.