30 Quotes by Sol Stein

A reader’s emotions can be sparked with few words. That’s the power of dialogue.

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.

To create tension, dialogue needs to be stretched out. That is, characters should not be immediately responsive.

Most of the time, tough, combative, adversarial dialogue is much more exciting than physical action.

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.

Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader, not the fact that it’s raining, but the feeling of being rained upon.

A writer writes what other people only think.

A lawyer’s job is to manipulate the skeletons in other people’s closets.

There’s nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein.