Narrative Quote by Joan Didion

Your job as a writer is to find storylines, narrative structures, and characters to show the things that you believe rather than saying them…

— Philipp Meyer

Other writers know what you're going through, what you're talking about when you write.

— Andrew Sean Greer

You want in all cases for the story to get through the writing.

— Alice Munro

Narrative becomes the way you make sense of chaos. That's how you focus the world. It's the only reason you should ever try this…

— Dennis Lehane

I think that, as a writer, while it's your job to construct stories, you have to navigate your way through them with your heart.

— Abi Morgan

Writing is a process of discovering. I could never outline a narrative; that just sounds boring. There's no joy of discovery in what you're…

— Bob Shacochis

No matter what kind of writing you do, it's always the details that make the story.

— Elizabeth Berg

Each story tells me how to write it, but not the one afterwards.

— Eudora Welty

I see my writing as the process of looking at the usual, but from two steps to the side.

— Katherine Dunn

That's the moment you look for as a writer, when the characters start telling you what they are doing rather than you telling them.

— Mike Bartlett

You spend so much time as a writer telling straight and linear stories.

— Nathan Englander

Writing is like a bird-watcher watching for birds: the stories are there: you just have to train yourself to look for them.

— Barbara Mertz