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Author: James N. Frey
Quotes of Author: James N. Frey
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  1. James N. Frey _ How to Write a Damn Good

    A story is a narrative of consequential events involving worthy human characters who change as a result of those events. THE
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  2. James N. Frey _ How to Write a Damn Good

    So far, we've discussed how you start with a germinal idea and what makes a good one; then we discussed the villain profile and how to create a villain with a dark mission, who will take actions to get what he wants. These actions are the plot behind the plot. The hero's job in a thriller, remember, is to foil evil. The villain's plot behind the plot is the evil the hero must foil. These actions the hero and others take to counter the plot behind the plot make up the plot of your thriller. Simple, no?
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  3. James N. Frey _ How to Write a Damn Good

    Before you go ahead with a flashback, ask yourself if you canmake the same impact on your reader through conflict in thenow of the novel. If the answer is no, then the flashback isnecessary, but remember that within the flashback all the sameprinciples of good dramatic storytelling which apply in the nowof your story-fully rounded characters, a rising conflict, innerconflicts, and so on-continue to apply.
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  4. James N. Frey _ How to Write a Damn Good

    Readers find most flashbacksintolerable. Yet a lot of neophyte writers flash back like mad.Why? No one but the Creator of the Universe knows for sure,but there is a likely answer: they find the conflicts in the "now"of the story produce anxiety in themselves.
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  5. James N. Frey _ How to Write a Damn Good

    You can kill the spell of identification just as easily as youcan create it-if you lose the readers' sympathy for the character.You can lose reader sympathy by having your character commitacts of cruelty to another character with whom the readers identifymore strongly or for whom they have strong sympathy. Youcan lose reader sympathy by having the character make dumbchoices-acting at less than maximum capacity. The idiot inthe horror story who responds to creepy noises by going intothe attic armed only with a candle is an example. You can losereader sympathy when a character seems too ordinary, is stereotyped,or doesn't struggle hard enough. The reader wants tocheer a fighter, not witness a milquetoast wallowing in, say, selfpity.
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  6. James N. Frey _ How to Write a Damn Good

    Novel writing is like heroin addiction; it takes everything you've got.
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  7. James N. Frey _ How to Write a Damn Good

    For some it is harder towrite a novel than to row a bathtub across the North Atlantic.
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  8. James N. Frey _ How to Write a Damn Good

    Fiction can be more real to the reader than reality itself because fiction is the of life
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  9. James N. Frey _ How to Write a Damn Good

    To set a forest on fire, you light a match. To set a character on fire, you put him in conflict.
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  10. James N. Frey _ How to Write a Damn Good

    Writer's block is real. It happens. Some days you sit down at theold typewriter, put your fingers on the keys, and nothing popsinto your head. Blanko. Nada. El nothingissimo. What you dowhen this happens is what separates you from the one-of-thesedays-I'm-gonna-write-a-book crowd.
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