Daily Writing Prompt from Writers Write

Inspiration from thedreamygiraffe

Literary Birthday - 20 May

Happy Birthday, Honoré de Balzac, born 20 May 1799, died 18 August 1850

12 Quotes

1. A flow of words is a sure sign of duplicity.
2. Behind every great fortune lies a great crime.
3. The more one judges, the less one loves.
4. If we could but paint with the hand what we see with the eye.
5. It is always assumed by the empty-headed, who chatter about themselves for want of something better, that people who do not discuss their affairs openly must have something to hide.
6. You may imitate, but never counterfeit.
7. A letter is a soul, so faithful an echo of the speaking voice that to the sensitive it is among the richest treasures of love.
8. I am a galley slave to pen and ink.
9. All happiness depends on courage and work.
10. Reading brings us unknown friends.
11. Equality may perhaps be a right, but no power on earth can ever turn it into a fact.
12. There is no such thing as a great talent without great willpower.

Balzac was a French novelist and playwright. His magnum opus was a sequence of short stories and novels called La Comédie humaine, which shows French life after the 1815 fall of Napoleon Bonaparte. Balzac is known as one of the founders of realism in European literature. His multifaceted characters are complex, morally ambiguous, and fully human.

by Amanda Patterson for Writers Write

Figurative Language - Definitions (Source)

The hero of the story – understanding antagonists

One of the problems with plotting…

Many beginner writers struggle with plotting. This is because they don’t have an antagonist. In Writers Write we teach that the antagonist is not necessarily a bad person. The antagonist is the character whose story goal is the opposite of the protagonist.

This diagram illustrates this perfectly. Each of these characters is the hero of his or her own story. Without an antagonist your hero will wallow in his or her thoughts for 80 00 words.

Source for Image

From Writers Write - How to write a novel by Amanda Patterson

Literary Birthday - 19 May

Happy Birthday, Nora Ephron, born 19 May 1941, died 26 June 2012

10 Quotes

1. Insane people are always sure that they are fine. It is only the sane people who are willing to admit that they are crazy.
2. The hardest thing about writing is writing.
3. Reading is everything. Reading makes me feel like I’ve accomplished something, learned something, become a better person. Reading makes me smarter. Reading gives me something to talk about later on. Reading is the unbelievably healthy way my attention deficit disorder medicates itself. Reading is escape, and the opposite of escape; it’s a way to make contact with reality after a day of making things up, and it’s a way of making contact with someone else’s imagination after a day that’s all too real. Reading is grist. Reading is bliss.
4. I try to write parts for women that are as complicated and interesting as women actually are.
5. I don’t care who you are. When you sit down to write the first page of your screenplay, in your head, you’re also writing your Oscar acceptance speech.
6. If pregnancy were a book they would cut the last two chapters.
7. Above all, be the heroine of your life, not the victim.
8. I don’t have much of a routine. I go through periods where I work a great deal at all hours of the day whenever I am around a typewriter, and then I go through spells where I don’t do anything. I just sort of have lunch—all day. I never have been able to stick to a schedule. I work when there is something due or when I am really excited about a piece.
9. First of all, whatever you do, work in a field that has something to do with writing or publishing. So you will be exposed to what people are writing about and how they are writing, and as important, so you will be exposed to people in the business who will get to know you and will call on you if they are looking for someone for a job.
10. Secondly, you have to write. And if you don’t have a job doing it, then you have to sit at home doing it.

Ephron was an American journalist, essayist, playwright, screenwriter, novelist, producer, director, and blogger. She is best known for her romantic comedies and was nominated three times for the Academy Award for Best Writing (Original Screenplay): for Silkwood, When Harry Met Sally…, and Sleepless in Seattle. 

by Amanda Patterson for Writers Write

Literary Birthday - 19 May

Happy Birthday, Jodi Picoult, born 19 May 1966

Jodi Picoult’s Top Three Writing Tips

1. Read a ton. Reading will inspire you. It will also help you find out where you belong as a writer.
2. Write every day. Treat writing as a job. There is no such thing as waiting for the muse. If you want to to be taken seriously as a writer, take writing seriously.
3. Do not stop in the middle of your first book. Finish it. No matter what. All writers go through this. It’s more of a fear of not being good enough that makes you stop. You think, ‘What if I’m not as good as I thought I was?’ Do not allow it to stop you. If you don’t finish that first book you’re making life difficult for yourself.

To read more about Jodi Picoult’s writing routine, the best book she’s written, and her thoughts on Hollywood, follow this link

Picoult is the best-selling author of 18 novels, including My Sister’s Keeper and Sing Me Home. Her last five novels have debuted at number one on the New York Times best-seller list.

by Amanda Patterson for Writers Write

Where Writers Write - Hilary Mantel

Daily Writing Prompt from Writers Write

A Writer’s Comic

Literary Birthday - 18 May

Happy Birthday, Lionel Shriver, born 18 May 1957

Seven Lionel Shriver Quotes

1. I gather that the number of readers in this country is going down, while the number of people who aspire to write is going up. The best thing you can do as a would-be writer is to read other people’s work — and as an ironclad rule of thumb, never write anything that you wouldn’t want to read yourself.
2. I am a pedant. I insist that people pronounce ‘flaccid’ as ‘flaksid,’ which is dictionary-correct but defies onomatopoeic instinct and annoys one and all. I never let people get away with using ‘enervated‘ to mean ‘energized,‘ when the word means without energy, thank you very much. Not only am I, apparently, the last remaining American citizen who knows the difference between ‘like’ and ‘as,‘ but I freely alienate everyone in my surround by interrupting, ‘You mean, as I said.’ Or, ‘You mean, you gave it to whom,’ or ‘You mean, that’s just between you and me. ’ I am a lone champion of the accusative case, and so –- obviously — have no friends
3. Fiction writers don’t write about money enough.
4. Rituals — fixing cups of coffee, paring fingernails, and all manner of variations on staring blankly out the window — are all forms of delay, and therefore don’t constitute magical evocations of one’s muse, but distraction. Writing is fundamentally dull, and there are no real secrets to it: You sit down, you type something out, most of the time if you have any self-respect you throw it away. My desk? Is usually towering with huge piles of paper. This is not a mountainous topography I can promote. The piles represent everything I am ignoring — finances, magazines I think I should read but don’t really want to, and odious little tasks like filling out this very questionnaire.
5. Kevin as a phenomenon long ago ceased to have anything to do with me. I’ve published two novels since, and I’m stuck into another; fortunately, many Kevin fans have moved on to other novels of mine as well. Meanwhile, Kevin can continue to suck a lychee sadistically in front of his mother after her daughter has lost an eye without any further help from me. My starkest realisation that this novel has achieved a life of its own was while watching Ramsay’s riveting adaptation of the book.
6. I am not as nice as I look.
7. Though raised by Aldai Stevenson Democrats, I have a violent, retrograde right-wing streak that alarms and horrifies my acquaintances in New York. And I have been told more than once that I am ‘extreme’.

Shriver is an American journalist and the author of 12 novels. She is best known for We Need to Talk About Kevin. She lives in London.

Source for Image

by Amanda Patterson for Writers Write

The ghost writer provides an interesting service to the world of stories. After all, a book is written by the ghost writer but someone else gets the credit.

‘The book just seemed to write itself,’ the author will tell the press and adoring fans. And, the ghost writer will sit in the wings, the Cinderella of the literary world.

What does it take to become a ghost writer?