Happy Birthday, Nicholas Evans, born 26 July 1950, died 9 August 2022.
Quotes On Writing
- 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.
- Try not to copy anyone’s style and don’t think about the reader, just write for yourself.
- Be your characters, inhabit their heads; never bend the characters to fit the story; write what is true to them.
- [I write from] about 9.30am until around 7pm – then I go for a run and try to figure out what went wrong.
- 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).
- These mystical things, metaphor and myth, are so much harder to do in movies than in books. Movies are so very literal.
- 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.
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