Quotes & Sayings About Writing Techniques

You can learn all sorts of rules and techniques of writing and still not be able to assemble something beautiful or enchanting. — Peter Turchi

The goal in Pietism was the service of God in ministry to the world — Donald G. Bloesch

As a composer I might class myself as a Neo-Romantic, inasmuch as I have always regarded music as a highly personal and emotional form of expression. I like to write music which takes its inspiration from poetry, art and nature. I do not care for purely decorative music. Although I am in sympathy with modern idioms, I abhor music which attempts nothing more than the illustration of a stylistic fad. And in using modern techniques, I have tried at all times to subjugate them to a larger idea or a grander human feeling. — Bernard Herrmann

I researched fiction writing for months before I taught my first class, much of it looking for strong techniques from bestselling authors. — James Thayer

Who gave you permission to speak, Murphy?" Jetta asked. "This is Terry's summit."
"I suppose that's true," Terry said, "But I'm fucking pissed off at all of you, so I decided I'd let him talk."
"And with that gracious introduction," Murphy continued, "I'll proceed. — Elizabeth Hunter

What is the most popular scene in the Bible? Adam and Eve biting the apple. It's not there. — Eduardo Galeano

I do what I want to do. I see where my enthusiasm is. Over the years, my techniques expanded. That's how the writing came out. — Nick Bantock

When academics claim a topic is obsolete, they mean merely they are tired of flogging it with their cliches. — Kenny Smith

Times change and discoveries are made that render earlier techniques and approaches less effective. Change is inevitable. To remain rigid when the whole world is changing and advancing is to invite misfortune. The AA program in particular is challenged with an opportunity of unprecedented magnitude. — Chris Prentiss

And God made two great lights, great for their use
To man, the greater to have rule by day, The less by night ... — John Milton

I am a monster. Not because I'm a product of my environment, or because I like to hurt women. I am a monster because I choose to embrace my darkness - I revel in it and nurture it like it's a newborn. I feed it regularly from the suffering of others, because that's what I do: I make those I love suffer. I betray everyone who ever wrongly put their trust in me. And at the end of the day, this girl will be no different. Because that's my special power; that's the one thing I'm truly good at - betrayal. — Anonymous

If you have a craftsman's command of the language and basic writing techniques you'll be able to write - as long as you know what you want to say. — Jeffery Deaver

Only now, years after having read though the works of Shakespeare, Dickens, Scott, Poe, Balzac did he realise that even the most prolific writer created only one novel; throw away the individual bindings and the whole of each man's writing constituted one book: the true and complete portrait of himself. An artist had one thing to say, and one only; he might flail about, seek new techniques, forms, colour combinations, subjects, but intrinsically he would always paint the same canvas, write the same book. — Irving Stone

I love to read and teach experimental fiction but yes, neither this work nor my first novel is really that experimental. It uses some experimental techniques but in the end, I would not say that it is experimental. I'm not sure why. I do a lot of writing on my own, and I have always just written this way. — Porochista Khakpour

By the time I was six or seven-years-old, I had learned several techniques of how to use my voice and was able to choose the sound I wanted to distinguish myself, so I started writing songs on the piano. — Wendy Starland

Walking allows us to be in our bodies and in the world without being made busy by them. — Rebecca Solnit

You've got to be a good reader. So whatever genre that you're interested in, read a lot of books about it and it's better than any kind of writing class you'll ever take. You will absorb techniques and then in a lot of cases you can just start writing using the style of the book or the author that you admire and then your own style will emerge out of that. Be a diligent reader and then try to write seriously, professionally and approach everything in writing in a professional way. — Homer Hickam

By contrast, a man who has just learned to read and write responds, "To go by your words, they should all be white." To go by your words - in that phrase, a level is crossed. The information has been detached from any person, detached from the speaker's experience. Now it lives in the words, little life-support modules. Spoken words also transport information, but not with the self-consciousness that writing brings. Literate people take for granted their own awareness of words, along with the array of word-related machinery: classification, reference, definition. Before literacy, there is nothing obvious about such techniques. "Try to explain to me what a tree is," Luria says, and a peasant replies, "Why should I? Everyone knows what a tree is, they don't need me telling them. — James Gleick

As a writer, I like the list of "things to strive for" that Richard Yates kept above his typewriter:
genuine clarity
genuine feeling
the right word
the exact English sentence
the eloquent detail
the rigorous dramatization of story — Richard Yates

I'm not imprisoned in any one medium. In films I use techniques that are not necessarily what other directors attempt. When I write novels I also use techniques which can run counter to those that a novelist would use. — Philippe Claudel

Fiction and non-fiction are only different techniques of story telling. For reasons I do not fully understand, fiction dances out of me. Non-fiction is wrenched out by the aching, broken world I wake up to every morning. — Arundhati Roy

Time is, as you are probably aware, merely a convenient fiction. There is no such thing as time. — E. Nesbit

I don't think you could teach someone to be a genius, but you can certainly teach them to not make rookie mistakes and to look at writing the way a writer looks at writing, and not just the way a reader looks at writing. There are a lot of techniques and skills that can be taught that will be helpful to anybody, no matter how gifted they are, and I think writing programs can be very good for people. — Michael Chabon

The techniques are all means of dealing with one simple idea: She wrote it. (That is, the "wrong" person
in this case, female
has created the "right" value
i.e., art.)
Denial of Agency: She didn't write it.
Pollution of Agency: She shouldn't have written it.
Double Standard of Content: Yes, but look what she wrote about.
False Categorizing: She is not really she [an artist] and it is not really it [serious, of the right genre, aesthetically sound, important, etc.] so how could "she" have written "it"?
Or simply: Neither "she" nor "it" exists (simple exclusion). — Joanna Russ

It is from him, from Beolco Ruzzante, that I've learned to free myself from conventional literary writing and to express myself with words that you can chew, with unusual sounds, with various techniques of rhythm and breathing, even with the rambling nonsense-speech of the 'grammelot.' — Dario Fo

If your own mind is muddled, much more will the minds of your hearers be confused. — Dale Carnegie

All men are created unequal. — Robert A. Heinlein

I have been writing fairy tales for as long as I can remember. Not much has changed in terms of my natural attraction to the narrative techniques of fairy tales. My appreciation of them in the traditional stories has deepened, especially of flat and unadorned language, intuitive logic, abstraction, and everyday magic. — Kate Bernheimer

I'm a strong believer in telling stories through a limited but very tight third person point of view. I have used other techniques during my career, like the first person or the omniscient view point, but I actually hate the omniscient viewpoint. None of us have an omniscient viewpoint; we are alone in the universe. We hear what we can hear ... we are very limited. If a plane crashes behind you I would see it but you wouldn't. That's the way we perceive the world and I want to put my readers in the head of my characters. — George R R Martin

The instruction here is not for every kind of writer - not for the writer of nurse books or thrillers or porno or the cheaper sort of sci-fi - though it is true that what holds for the most serious kind of fiction will generally hold for junk fiction as well. (Not everyone is capable of writing junk fiction: It requires an authentic junk mind. Most creative-writing teachers have had the experience of occasionally helping to produce, by accident, a pornographer. The most elegant techniques in the world, filtered through a junk mind, become elegant junk techniques.) — John Gardner

In writing Snowboarding to Nirvana I have intentionally written an inspirational spiritual adventure story, which will hopefully provide people with metaphysical techniques, spiritual knowledge, hope and a brighter view of life. — Frederick Lenz

Inside" Children
Inside each of us are the children we were at each developmental stage.
With regard to our creative dreams, these inside children can prevent us from living them by "acting out" in order to try to get our attention. Your inner 5-year-old is not going to patiently wait as you learn intricate metalworking techniques or study impressionist painting. Yet, your inner 10-year-old may be perfectly suited to learn and observe new skills.
What's really needed is parenting of these inside children so that we bring them to age-appropriate activities. — SARK

You can't find what you don't go looking for. — Christie Ridgway

If the universe was scientific and just left to itself, then we'd have statistical probabilities to rely on. But once people are involved it sometimes becomes much more problematic because they're erratic. People do crazy things that don't make sense. — Sara Sheridan

Becoming an artist does not merely mean learning something, acquiring professional techniques and methods. Indeed, as someone has said, in order to write well you have to forget the grammar. — Andrei Tarkovsky

Foreshadowing is like playing cat and mouse. If done properly, it can be used to compel the reader to read on. — Mary Sage Nguyen

When a band first comes along, they should be confusing and doing something people don't accept. You don't want the first reaction to just be, "Oh, I get that." — Alexis Taylor

I don't want to re-write the same old book with the same tired techniques. I'd rather bring something new to the table that's true to me and that people will have a genuine reaction to. That's the whole point, isn't it? — Veronika Carnaby

Everything hurts, Fergal. All the time. Start with that and life won't be able to disappoint you. — Morgan Llywelyn