David Nicholls Quotes

Sometimes television can just jump from one bit of plot to the next, and the words fill in the in-between.

You can have the greatest characters in the world and write beautifully, but if nothing's happening, the story falls on its face pretty quickly.

Beginnings and endings are not interesting; audiences want the high point, which means you've got to get to it and get to it now - get the gun out fast, the clothes off quick.

In fiction, it's a big challenge to keep the reader in one place for so long.

Sometimes, you don't realize that something is actually a sidetrack for the story, or it takes the tension out of a scene.

Even if your novel occurs in an unfamiliar setting in which all the customs and surroundings will seem strange to your reader, it's still better to start with action. The reason for this is simple. If the reader wanted an explanation of milieu, he would read nonfiction. He doesn't want information. He wants a story.

From beginning to end it's about keeping the energy and the intensity of the story and not doing too much and not doing too little, but just enough so people stay interested and stay involved in the characters.

One of the things I admire about longer stories is the way writers can work with dead time and slower, more idle moments - not only can they feel expansive, they feel lived-in; the unhurried pacing often makes the endings even more resonant and surprising for me.

When you're telling taut, tight storytelling that has any kind of built-in plot twist elements, you tend to want to stack everything up on top of itself as opposed to letting things breathe and be languid in terms of the passage of time.

In fiction, you learn about pacing and how to build tension - which is something you want in a really good nonfiction feature article as well.

I find that most novels are not good all the way through. A story can be good all the way through, every sentence.

In a book, you can kind of take time and have lulls in places.

A novel requires a certain kind of world-building and also a certain kind of closure, ultimately. Whereas with a short story you have this sense that there are hinges that the reader doesn't see.

Without sounding too pretentious, I was sort of a slave to the narrative. When the narrative cracks in, I have to go where it takes me. I had to go to the Bohemian Grove. It was the obvious end to the book.

Storytelling, in print or speech, needs vital energy.

If you're telling a story it's always best not to play the ending.

When you think of a great twist or a red herring or a way of misdirecting the reader, it is good, but you know that they are just tricks at the end of the day, and the way to keep interest is to write characters that people care about.

I began to be impressed by what made a good book-how you needed to have a sensible story, a plot that developed, with a beginning, a middle, and an end that would tie everything together.

In a novel you have to resist the urge to tell everything.

As far as what readers can expect with 'Maybe Someday,' I'm not the type of writer who writes to educate or inform my readers. I simply write to entertain them.

Fiction demands structures and recognizable shapes. Big surprises only draw attention to the writer's hand.

I can be so blown away by story lines.

There is no other way of writing a novel than to begin at the beginning at to continue to the end.

I think of novels in architectural terms. You have to enter at the gate, and this gate must be constructed in such a way that the reader has immediate confidence in the strength of the building.

Unless the story line carries the scenes, the scenes don't really mean anything.