Nancy Kress quotes

As a writer, you must know what promise your story or novel makes. Your reader will know. (Nancy Kress)
There are writers whose first drafts are so lean, so skimpy, that they must go back and add words, sentences, paragraphs to make their fiction intelligible or interesting. I don't know any of these writers. View quote
Nancy Kress
You must learn to be three people at once: writer, character, and reader. View quote
Nancy Kress
Every story makes a promise to the reader. Actually, two promises, one emotional and one intellectual, since the function of stories is to make us both feel and think. View quote
Nancy Kress
Readers want to see, hear, feel, smell the action of your story, even if that action is just two people having a quiet conversation. View quote
Nancy Kress
The process, not the results, have to be the reason a writer writes. Otherwise, creating a four-hundred-page novel is just too daunting a task. View quote
Nancy Kress
Questions that require answers are what keep readers going - and the place to start raising those questions is with your very first sentence. View quote
Nancy Kress
The climax is the place where the opposing forces in your story finally clash. This is true whether those opposing forces are two armies or two values inside a character's soul. View quote
Nancy Kress
For the professional writer, stories must be presented as a series of individual scenes, each one dramatized with dialogue and telling descriptions of who is present and what they're all doing. View quote
Nancy Kress
Conflict is the place where character and plot intersect. View quote
Nancy Kress