Literary Birthday – 26 July – Nicholas Evans

Happy Birthday, Nicholas Evans, born 26 July 1950, died 9 August 2022.

Quotes On Writing

  1. Read, read, and read. Then, when you think you’ve read enough and might know how to do it, find a story that moves you and tell it from the heart.
  2. Try not to copy anyone’s style and don’t think about the reader, just write for yourself.
  3. Be your characters, inhabit their heads; never bend the characters to fit the story; write what is true to them.
  4. [I write from] about 9.30am until around 7pm – then I go for a run and try to figure out what went wrong.
  5. For readers and writers alike, it’s always hard to eliminate the pictures that you have created in your own head and to be open-minded about a film-maker’s vision of the same story. I used to write screenplays and have adapted books for the screen, sometimes making substantial changes, so I know the process. When you are writing a book you can enter into the characters and let the reader know what’s going on in their heads and hearts. With movies, you are much more restricted; you have to tell the story through action, characters have to define themselves by what they do (unless, of course, it’s a Woody Allen film, in which case they can tell each other all the time how they are feeling).
  6. These mystical things, metaphor and myth, are so much harder to do in movies than in books. Movies are so very literal.
  7. And remember this: any attempt to find the formula of what makes a bestseller is doomed to failure. There is no such thing as a formula. But if what you write moves and excited you, there is a chance it may move and excite others too.

READ: Nicholas Evans On Why Writing Is Like Going On A Hike

Nicholas Evans was an English journalist, screenwriter, television and film producer, and novelist. He was best known for writing The Horse Whisperer.

by Amanda Patterson

Please click here for more authors’ birthdays: Literary Birthday Calendar

Posted on: 26th July 2013
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