Narration Rules Quotes & Sayings

The rules say that to tell a story you need first of all a measuring stick, a calendar, you have to calculate how much time has passed between you and the facts, the emotions to be narrated. — Elena Ferrante

I grew up in poverty. For 25 years I was fed on aid. — Emmanuel Jal

I drove a bike here. Fancy a ride on it?" "A motorcycle?" No, that wouldn't do. No trunk to carry his body in, and I wasn't about to balance it on the handlebars. — Jeaniene Frost

A central principle underlying Mrs Quinty's Rules for Writing is that you have to have a Beginning Middle and End. If you don't have these your Reader is lost. But what if Lost is exactly where the writer is? I asked her. Ruth, the writer can't be lost, she said, and then knew she'd said it too quickly and bit her lip knowing I was going to say something about Dad. She pressed her knees together and diverted into a fit of dry coughing. This, Dear Reader, is a river narrative. My chosen style is The Meander. I know that in The Brothers Karamazov (Book 1,777, Penguin Classics, London) Ippolit Kirillovich chose the historical form of narration because Dostoevsky says it checked his own exuberant rhetoric. Beginnings middles and ends force you into that place where you have to Stick to the Story as Maeve Mulvey said the night the Junior Certs were supposed to be going to the cinema in Ennis but were buying cans in Dunnes and drinking — Niall Williams

Our age is so resolutely unheroic, and the employment opportunities for registered demigods are now so scarce, that all we can do, in our enfeebled state, is laugh with envy and disbelief at the memory of those who still had the wit and the wherewithal to live large. — Anthony Lane

Everywhere Gage looked, his fingers itched to touch and his brain raced to keep up. A snake coiled beneath his right pec, an eagle took flight over his left. Stars, numbers, and Celtic symbols fought for real estate. Gage would need weeks to explore the storied terrain of Brady's body.
Better put in for some vacation time now. — Kate Meader

Leah moaned. Not in pain, but in a "oooh, someone's getting fucked soon and I hope it's me" way. — Tymber Dalton

You can tell me via straight narration that your main character, Mistuh Butts, never did well in school, never even went much to school, but you can convey the same thing, and much more vividly, by his speech . . . . and one of the cardinal rules of good fiction is never tell us a thing if you can show us, — Stephen King

A page of Addison or of Irving will teach more of style than a whole manual of rules, whilst a story of Poe's will impress upon the mind a more vivid notion of powerful and correct description and narration than will ten dry chapters of a bulky textbook. — H.P. Lovecraft

How can one know when he is stabilized in love? First, he is able to pour out his love upon others without demanding reciprocation. He can love without being loved. Second, he can meet recurrences of rejection with forgiveness. He will not react wrongly by anger, resentment or self-pity. Be — Frank Hammond