Les Standiford

“It’s like you’ve been in a terrible accident and had your arm amputated,” she told him. “After a while, the pain goes…

— Les Standiford

“Society.” John Forster, who would one day become Dickens’s great friend, adviser, editor, and first biographer, wrote in the Examiner that Dickens…

— Les Standiford

Maybe it's because we as writers are alone so often, are so attuned to listening to the run of our own thoughts,…

— Les Standiford

And while dollars have little to do with it, the fiction writer should be asking the same question any capable film producer…

— Les Standiford

Never open your story with a character thinking, I advise my students. As a further precaution, don’t put a character in a…

— Les Standiford

“That's easy," Russell said. "Because everybody else in this here place is crooked as a dog's hind leg. ...”

— Les Standiford

“Permanent construction of the sort Flagler was referring to would not come cheaply, however. Early in 1910, Flagler wrote to John Carrere,…

— Les Standiford

“The more a man learns, Dickens said, “the better, gentler, kinder man he must become. When he knows how much great minds…

— Les Standiford

“Daniel Maclise (whose 1839 oil of Dickens hangs today at the National Portrait Gallery).”

— Les Standiford

There are vast differences between scripts and stories, of course. Few fiction writers would want to give up the opportunity to explore…

— Les Standiford