Adam Johnson Quotes

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.

I find that most people know what a story is until they sit down to write one. Then they find themselves writing a sketch with an essay woven through it, or an essay with a sketch woven through it, or an editorial with a character in it, or a case history with a moral, or some other mongrel thing.

Every story teaches me how to write it. Unfortunately, it doesn't teach me how to write the next one.

I've never invested myself properly in trying to write stories. When I write lyrics, mostly I write each sentence separately on an index card and then I lay them out and I just mix them up.

I've tried to write deep and serious. I spent years working to write a story that would make my writing group cry.

For me, writing never gets easier. It's always hard work. It doesn't matter how many words you wrote the day before, or how many novels you've completed in the last decade: every day you start fresh again with that same blank page, or that same blank screen.

Plot is not my forte. It's like I have to live in my head in the book for a while before I figure out what the story is... My process is a bit messier.

If nobody is looking for a story, and I have no reason to write a story, I would really much rather to do anything else because it's no fun writing stories, particularly not for me. I just do it in order to sell them and make a couple of bucks.

I sat down and tried to write a story. "Ian MacArthur is a wonderful sweet fellow who wears glasses and peers out of them with delight." That was the first sentence. The problem was that I just couldn't think of the next one. After cleaning my room three times, I decided to leave Ian alone for a while because I was starting to get mad at him.

I might spend 100 pages trying to get to know the world I'm writing about: its contours, who are my main characters, what are their relationships to each other, and just trying to get a sense of what and who this book is about. Usually around that point of 100 pages, I start to feel like I'm lost, I have too much material, it's time to start making some choices. It's typically at that point that I sit down and try to make a formal outline and winnow out what's not working and what I'm most interested in, where the story seems to be going.

Sometimes I'll have a scene that strikes me, I just feel like writing a scene, a mini-story that seems like it might lead somewhere. But that is such a tentative, fishing-hook way to go about it that these days I've found it's easier to kind of at least have your concept and start attaching things to a skeleton. So I try to find the armature, the kind of backbone of it first that you can start to hang those scenes on.

I discovered John Truby ten years ago when a friend told me about his screenwriting course. I studied Truby's principles for a year and -- using them -- I wrote the first draft of The Thieves of Ostia in two weeks. I go back to his teachings before each new book I write. Each time I study Truby, I learn something new.

I have written a great many stories and I still don't know how to go about it except to write it and take my chances.

Every story teaches you how to write that story but not the next story.

I began to ask two questions while I was reading a book that excited me: not only what was going to happen next, but how is this done? How is it that these words on the page make me feel the way I'm feeling? This is the line of inquiry that I think happens in a child's mind, without him even knowing he has aspirations as a writer.

Usually after finishing a novel, I have a head full of bad ideas for the next one.

So in the first draft, I'm inventing people and place with a broad schematic idea of what's going to happen. In the process, of course, I discover all sorts of bigger and more substantial things.

I have every sympathy for writers. It's a mystery to me what they do. I can edit. I can cross out and say, 'I'm not saying that' or, 'How about we move this to here? Wouldn't that make that bit of the story better?' But where any of it comes from is beyond me. I will never write a play or a novel.

Writing 'when you find me,' it really exposed me to a way of putting together a story I hadn't thought of.

I enjoy the writing process and producing; I enjoy seeing an idea come to fruition. I'm driven by very complex characters. You look at the pilot of 'Breaking Bad,' where there's so much depth to the character, you can't help but be invested when you watch.

I love stories. I just enjoy telling stories and watching what these characters do - although writing continues to be just as hard as it always was.

Every day, I learn something new. I think one of the most exciting things for a writer is to work on a TV show. It's like a novel. You have a really long time to develop and learn about the characters, and you can just really keep digging in deeper, every week.

Each book has been different and has been challenging in its own way to write.

When I sit down to write, I don't think about writing about an idea or a given message. I just try to write a story which is hard enough.

And I think a good writer's gonna make it interesting. From the first paragraph it will all be interesting. Just work at it and work at it and work at it.