F. Scott Fitzgerald Quotes

It's bad writing, however naturalistic it's written, that's where you have to do your best acting.

Write for yourself, not for a perceived audience. If you do, you'll mostly fall flat on your face, because it's impossible to judge what people want. And you have to read. That's how you learn what is good writing and what is bad. Then the main thing is application. It's hard work.

The simple idiot's advice I give to screenwriters who say they want to sell a screenplay is, 'Write good.'

I just keep following the good writing. I'm not good enough to make bad writing look good. Some people can, and I admire them for it, but I cannot. I will go down with the ship.

The work of a correct and regular writer is a garden accurately formed and diligently planted, varied with shades, and scented with flowers.

You will have written exceptionally well if, by skilful arrangement of your words, you have made an ordinary one seem original.

To me to write well is to battle stereotypes. To write well is to create three-dimensional characters that seem human.

Good writers hate bad writing but hating bad writing doesn’t make you good. Writing badly does.

I've got to hear the rhythm of the sentences; I want the music of the prose. I want to see ordinary things transformed not by the circumstances in which I see them but by the language with which they're described. That's what I love when I read.

I like going after good material, well-written material.

A good novel is a good novel, pointe finale. And I think what I'm writing is exactly that.

Agents and publishers only want one thing - good writing.

There's a lot of writing in television that can sound like it's taken out of a package, and the way to get around that is to not allow yourself to deliver it that way.

Essayists, like poets, are born and not made, and for one worth remembering, the world is confronted with a hundred not worth reading. Your true essayist is, in a literary sense, the friend of everybody.

It feels amazing to work with writers that write really well.

It's fun to twist fairy tales, but at the same time, I know I need to write stories that are different enough from each other that fans don't feel like they're just reading the same story over and over again.

Good writing is good writing, and I'm so happy when I read it.

A good writer turns fact into truth; a bad writer will, more often than not, accomplish the opposite.

It's all in the writing. The writing has got to be there. Whether that's dialogue or character, or whatever, it doesn't matter. As long as they've done something special, than you can do something special.

You can fake a lot of stuff, but you can't fake if the story isn't there and if the writing isn't good.

My preference is for really good writing, and I just really don't care where it is.

You're only reduced to a cliche if you don't humanize a character.

A lot of the time, I read something I've written, and I think, 'Well, that's competent. It's not exactly breaking any boundaries. It's not exactly transgressive. It's just a bunch of fake people in a room talking to each other. But maybe there's a value to that.'

I'm a competent novelist. I'm getting better. But I'm a really good short story writer.

A sports writer is a stylist of some kind. He is trying to convey mood and character and emotion.