The most-asked question when someone describes a novel, movie or short story to a friend probably is, ‘How does it end?’ Endings carry tremendous weight with readers; if they don’t like the ending, chances are they’ll say they didn’t like the work. Failed endings are also the most common problems editors have with submitted works. Nancy Kress Read Quote
Questions that require answers are what keep readers going – and the place to start raising those questions is with your very first sentence. Nancy Kress Read Quote
Conflict drives fiction; no one wants to read a four-hundred-page novel in which everything rolls along smoothly. Nancy Kress Read Quote
Readers want to see, hear, feel, smell the action of your story, even if that action is just two people having a quiet conversation. Nancy Kress Read Quote
If you consistently write ‘The sun set’ rather than ‘The sun sank slowly in the bright western sky,’ your story will move three times as fast. Of course, there are times you want the longer version for atmosphere – but not many. Wordiness not only kills pace; it bores readers. Nancy Kress Read Quote
Many novice writers try to avoid using ‘said’ by substituting synonyms: ‘he uttered,’ ‘she murmured,’ ‘he questioned.’ It’s true that any word repeated too often becomes monotonous, but substitutions for ‘said’ can be worse than its repetition. Nancy Kress Read Quote
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. Nancy Kress Read Quote
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. Nancy Kress Read Quote
In general, fiction is divided into ‘literary fiction’ and ‘commercial fiction.’ Nobody can definitively say what separates one from the other, but that doesn’t stop everybody (including me) from trying. Your book probably will be perceived as one or the other, and that will affect how it is read, packaged and marketed. Nancy Kress Read Quote
