Attention Quote by W. Somerset Maugham

The author always loads his dice, but he must never let the reader see that he has done so.

— W. Somerset Maugham

There's almost always a point in a book where something happens that triggers the rest of the plot.

— Jonathan Carroll

Suspense: the only literary tool that has any effect upon tyrants and savages.

— E. M. Forster

If a writer is true to his characters they will give him his plot. Observations must play second fiddle to integrity.

— Phyllis Bottome

Considerations of plot do a great deal of heavy lifting when it comes to long-form narrative - readers will overlook the most ham-fisted prose…

— Lynn Coady

The suspense in a novel is not only in the reader, but in the novelist himself, who is intensely curious too about what will…

— Mary McCarthy

“What's remarkable about fiction is that it places you in the unusual position of having no trajectory. You stand aside, motives abandoned for the…

— Tom Rachman

If you over-plot your book you strangle your characters. Your characters have to have enough freedom and life to be able to surprise you.

— Alan Lightman

When the reader and one narrator know something the other narrator does not, the opportunities for suspense and plot development and the shifting of…

— Sara Zarr

“This means the literary effect is not the main concern here; the author is more concerned with plot. And that plot must be relatively…

— Stella Gibbons

The suspense of a novel is not only in the reader, but in the novelist, who is intensely curious about what will happen to…

— Mary McCarthy

“...no mind ever grew fat on a diet of novels. The pleasure which they occasionally offer is far too heavily paid for: they undermine…

— Elias Canetti