Sol Stein > Quotes

“Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader, not the fact that it’s raining, but the feeling of being rained upon.”
― Sol Stein, Stein On Writing: A Master Editor of Some of the Most Successful Writers of Our Century Shares His Craft Techniques and Strategies

“In our not-yet-acknowledged secret garden lie the seeds of some of our best not-yet-written stories”
― Sol Stein, How to Grow a Novel: The Most Common Mistakes Writers Make and How to Overcome Them

“There’s nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein.”
― Sol Stein, Stein On Writing: A Master Editor of Some of the Most Successful Writers of Our Century Shares His Craft Techniques and Strategies

“Say it new or say it straight.”
― Sol Stein, Stein on Writing

“It can be said that one slip of point of view by a writer can hurt a story badly, and several slips can be fatal.' Stein on Writing”
― Sol Stein

“A writer writes what other people only think.”
― Sol Stein, How to Grow a Novel: The Most Common Mistakes Writers Make and How to Overcome Them

“The novelist is like the conductor of an orchestra, his back to the audience, his face invisible, summoning the experience of music for the people he cannot see. The writer as conductor also gets to compose the music and play all of the instruments, a task less formidable than it seems.”
― Sol Stein, Stein On Writing: A Master Editor of Some of the Most Successful Writers of Our Century Shares His Craft Techniques and Strategies

“The function of suspense is to put the reader in danger of an overfull bladder.”
― Sol Stein, Stein On Writing: A Master Editor of Some of the Most Successful Writers of Our Century Shares His Craft Techniques and Strategies

“You can never know enough about your characters.”
― Sol Stein, Stein On Writing: A Master Editor of Some of the Most Successful Writers of Our Century Shares His Craft Techniques and Strategies

“I see manuscripts and books that are spoiled for the literary reader because they are one long stream of top-of-the-head writing, a writer telling a story without concern for precision or freshness in the use of language. Some of this storytelling reads as if it were spoken rather than written, stuffed with tired images that pop into the writer's head because they are so familiar. The top of the head is fit for growing hair, but not for generating fine prose.”
― Sol Stein, How to Grow a Novel: The Most Common Mistakes Writers Make and How to Overcome Them

“Characters paralyzed by the meaninglessness of modern life still have to drink water from time to time.”
― Sol Stein, Stein On Writing: A Master Editor of Some of the Most Successful Writers of Our Century Shares His Craft Techniques and Strategies

“Tension produces instantaneous anxiety, and the reader finds it delicious.”
― Sol Stein, Stein On Writing: A Master Editor of Some of the Most Successful Writers of Our Century Shares His Craft Techniques and Strategies

“Today’s readers can be roughly divided into two groups, those who accept the fantasy villains of childhood, as in the James Bond stories and Arnold Schwarzenegger films, and those who insist on credibility.”
― Sol Stein, Stein On Writing: A Master Editor of Some of the Most Successful Writers of Our Century Shares His Craft Techniques and Strategies

“In America only the successful writer is important, in France all writers are important, in England no writer is important, in Australia you have to explain what a writer is.”
― Sol Stein, Stein On Writing: A Master Editor of Some of the Most Successful Writers of Our Century Shares His Craft Techniques and Strategies

“What I have never witnessed is a writer’s work succeeding notably in a field he doesn’t habitually read for pleasure.”
― Sol Stein, Stein On Writing: A Master Editor of Some of the Most Successful Writers of Our Century Shares His Craft Techniques and Strategies

“A writer who always has his characters “walk” is missing opportunities.”
― Sol Stein, Stein On Writing: A Master Editor of Some of the Most Successful Writers of Our Century Shares His Craft Techniques and Strategies

“When we get involved with other people, the chances of a clash are present even with people we love because we do not have the same scripts in our heads.”
― Sol Stein, Stein On Writing: A Master Editor of Some of the Most Successful Writers of Our Century Shares His Craft Techniques and Strategies

“Parents begin by loving their children; as they grow older they judge them; sometimes they forgive them.”
― Sol Stein, Stein On Writing: A Master Editor of Some of the Most Successful Writers of Our Century Shares His Craft Techniques and Strategies

“Writers of nonfiction have the right—perhaps even the responsibility—to access the wonders of the writer’s craft to make their work interesting and enjoyable.”
― Sol Stein, Stein On Writing: A Master Editor of Some of the Most Successful Writers of Our Century Shares His Craft Techniques and Strategies

“be sure you don’t stop the story while describing. You are a storyteller, not an interior decorator.”
― Sol Stein, Stein On Writing: A Master Editor of Some of the Most Successful Writers of Our Century Shares His Craft Techniques and Strategies

“We are all writers from an early age. Most of what we write is nonfiction—essays for school, letters to friends, memoranda to colleagues—in which we are trying to pass on information. We are raised with a traditional nonfiction mind-set. Even when we write love letters, we are trying to communicate how we feel and not necessarily trying to evoke an emotion in the recipient, though that might be better suited to our purpose.”
― Sol Stein, Stein On Writing: A Master Editor of Some of the Most Successful Writers of Our Century Shares His Craft Techniques and Strategies

“Inaccurate similes and metaphors have the effect of deflecting the reader’s attention from the story to the words on the page. Yet when carried off, especially when a simile is original and a metaphor sings, there is no greater glory in the practice of words.”
― Sol Stein, Stein on Writing

“The fact that acute differences exist between social and cultural classes seems to be acknowledged in most of the world, but in the United States, where democracy is often confounded with egalitarianism, even the idea that social classes exist has long been taboo. It is, however, a writer’s specialty to deal with taboos, to speak the unspoken, to reveal, to uncover, to show in the interaction of people the difference between what we profess and how we act. Moreover, because touchy subjects arouse emotion, they are especially useful for the writer who knows that arousing the emotions of his audience is the test of his skill.”
― Sol Stein, Stein on Writing

“Others find excuses for not writing at the same time every day, balk at re-revising incessantly, or excuse themselves because their lives are beset by difficulties. I am deaf to that excuse because I worked with the most disadvantaged writer in history, Christy Brown, who had the use of his brain, the little toe on his left foot, and little else. When he was a seemingly helpless baby lying on the kitchen floor of a cottage in Ireland, his remarkable mother saw him reach out with his left foot and with his one good toe manage to pick up a crayon that one of his siblings had dropped. That was the beginning of a writer. Eventually someone at IBM made a special typewriter for Christy that enabled him to punch in a letter at a time with his one working toe. I published five of Christy Brown’s books, one of which made the national bestseller lists.”
― Sol Stein, Stein on Writing

“In fiction that has a higher aim, the credibility of every important action in the story is at risk unless the writer is confident that the motivation or ability of the character makes the action credible.”
― Sol Stein, Stein on Writing

“Dialogue, contrary to popular view, is not a recording of actual speech; it is a semblance of speech, an invented language of exchanges that build in tempo or content toward climaxes.”
― Sol Stein, Stein on Writing

“Diction involves the choice of words for their precise meaning and sound, the arrangement of those words, and their selection for effect.”
― Sol Stein, Stein On Writing: A Master Editor of Some of the Most Successful Writers of Our Century Shares His Craft Techniques and Strategies

“Suspense builds when the reader wants something to happen and it isn’t happening yet. Or something is happening and the reader wants it to stop, now. And it doesn’t.”
― Sol Stein, Stein on Writing

“Wilmer Stone read our stories to us in a monotone as if he were reading from the pages of a phone directory. What we learned with each stab of pain was that the words themselves and not the inflections supplied by the reader had to carry the emotion of the story.”
― Sol Stein, Solutions for Writers: Practical Craft Techniques for Fiction and Non-Fiction

“The Art & Craft of Novel Writing by Oakley”
― Sol Stein, How to Grow a Novel: The Most Common Mistakes Writers Make and How to Overcome Them