Sue Grafton

“(…) I have come to find the years following August 1914 one of the most fascinating, enchanting, moving, terrifying periods in history.”
(Laurie R. King, “Historical Mysteries: The Past Is A Foreign Country”)

“(…) one of the pleasures in reading a good historical is that it’s like a trip to a foreign country without the inoculation.”
(Laurie R. King, “Historical Mysteries: The Past Is A Foreign Country”)

“Medical crisis that the public would consider high drama are just part of a day’s work for a doctor, and we do not realize how fascinating our jobs must seem to everyone else.”
(Tess Gerritsen, “The Medical Thriller”)

“Humor is frequently used in books for beginning readers because it’s a nice balance to tension; it creates the valleys between peaks of suspense.”
(Joan Lowery Nixon, “Writing Mysteries for Young Readers”)

“The classic detective story involves first the planting and then the concealing of clues.”
(Carolyn Wheat, “Dress for Success: Developing Your Personal Style”)

Alas, writing is not a one-recipe-fits-all endeavor. This is probably for the best—otherwise the result might be uniform but dull bread.

A writer’s imagination will allow him to picture revising a book until it is a book that everyone will love. Forget it. Even the Bible isn’t universally loved.

And that’s what fiction’s all about, engaging the reader’s emotions. If you don’t do that, you are simply using words to convey information, and you might as well be writing instruction manuals, where the twist ending is that the manufacturer left out a screw.
(John Lutz, "In the Beginning Is the End")

(…) If you get stuck on a book, there must be something wrong with it. Set it aside or fix it.
(Lawrence Block, “The Book Stops Here”)

There are a few writers who sit down and begin a tale without a scintilla of an idea as to where it’s headed. Most of these writers never sell anything. (…) Beginning a work of fiction without having at least some idea as to the ending is something like jumping into your car and driving away without any idea as to your destination.
(John Lutz, In the Beginning Is the End)

Every book is a case unto itself, and every time we sit down to write one we take a plunge into uncharted waters. It is a hazardous business, this novel-writing dodge, and it doesn’t cease to be so after long years in the game.
(Lawrence Block, “The Book Stops Here”)

The writer should remember the old newspaperism that violence only counts when it touches home.
(Bill Granger, “Depiction of Violence”)

Once I have my setting, I search for a main character who will be driven to solve a life-or-death problem. Little difficulties don’t build high suspense. The more serious and threatening the problem, the higher the reader’s interest.
(Phyllis A. Whitney, “Pacing and Suspense”)

When a book grinds to a halt, it may have done so for a reason. To avoid looking for the reason is a little like overlooking the trouble lights on a car’s dashboard. (…) Maybe you’ll wind up all right, but there’s a good chance that sooner or later they’ll come for you with a tow truck.
(Lawrence Block, “The Book Stops Here”)

(…) I must not try to keep everything at high pitch all the way through a story. Excitement, if too steady, can be as boring as having nothing at all happening.
(Phyllis A. Whitney, “Pacing and Suspense”)

For years, before the advent of the word processor, I never outlined my novels. Even when I was a screenwriter I resisted writing treatments. In both cases I preferred the method attributed to William Faulkner. When asked how he wrote his books he said something like, “I set my characters on the road and walk beside them, listening to what they have to say.”
(Robert Campbell, “Outlining”)

Style gives life to two-dimensional words strung along a blank white page.
(Carolyn Wheat, “Dress for Success: Developing Your Personal Style”)

You have “been there”, even though you were only reading words on a page. That’s style.
(Carolyn Wheat, “Dress for Success: Developing Your Personal Style”)

I find that by walking alongside my characters before they are fully formed I’m often pleasantly, even dramatically, surprised by conversations, actions, and philosophies that I could not have imagined.
(Tony Hillerman, “Building Without Blueprints”)

“Now, we’ll see what’s going to happen” sounds like an American speaking. But “Now we will see what is going to happen” sounds to most of us like a German. Or Frenchman. Or Russian. It works because we know, even if we’ve never consciously noticed it, that many people who learn English as a foreign language never become comfortable with its frequent use of contractions.
(Aaron Elkins, “How to Write Convincing Dialogue”)