Sol Stein famous quotes

04-14-2025

The biggest difference between a writer and a would-be writer is their attitude toward rewriting. . . . Unwillingness to revise usually signals an amateur.
-- Sol Stein

#Attitude #Differences #Rewriting
In our not-yet-acknowledged secret garden lie the seeds of some of our best not-yet-written stories
-- Sol Stein

#Lying #Garden #Secret
The expert magician seeks to deceive the mind, rather than the eye.
-- Sol Stein

#Eye #Mind #Experts
Our instinct as human beings is to provide answers, to ease tension. As writers our job is the opposite, to create tension and not dispel it immediately.
-- Sol Stein

#Jobs #Opposites #Answers
A writer writes what other people only think.
-- Sol Stein

#Writing #Thinking #People
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

#Book #Writing #Tired
A reader's emotions can be sparked with few words. That's the power of dialogue.
-- Sol Stein

#Writing #Few Words #Emotion
To create tension, dialogue needs to be stretched out. That is, characters should not be immediately responsive.
-- Sol Stein

#Character #Writing #Needs
Readers take in dialogue one thought at a time. A frequent mistake of beginners is to combine thoughts, which may be suitable for other forms of writing but not for dialogue. Another mistake is speechifying. Three sentences at a time is tops, yet many beginners write speeches that go on and on.
-- Sol Stein

#Mistake #Writing #Beginners
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

#Writing #Views #Speech
Most of the time, tough, combative, adversarial dialogue is much more exciting than physical action.
-- Sol Stein

#Writing #Action #Tough
Dialogue is a lean language in which every word counts.
-- Sol Stein

#Writing #Language #Dialogue
Readers, transformed by film and TV, are used to seeing stories. The reading experience . . . is increasingly visual.
-- Sol Stein

#Reading #Stories #Tvs

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