James Patterson Writing Quotations

I guess I write four or five hours a day, but I do it seven days a week. It's very disciplined, yes, but it's joy for me.

If I'm writing and a chapter isn't coming, I just move ahead.

I did know that the book would end with a mind-boggling trial, but I didn't know exactly how it would turn out. I like a little suspense when I am writing, too.

I never read detective novels. I started out in graduate school writing a more serious book. Right around that time I read 'The Day of the Jackal' and 'The Exorcist'. I hadn't read a lot of commercial fiction, and I liked them.

If you want to write for yourself, get a diary. If you want to write for your friends, get a blog. If you want to write for others...become an author.

I'm big on having a blistering pace. That's one of the hallmarks of what I do, and that's not easy. I never blow up cars and things like that, so it's something else that keeps the suspense flowing. I try not to write a chapter that isn't going to turn on the movie projector in your head.

When I write I pretend I'm telling a story to someone in the room and I don't want them to get up until I'm finished.

Stop trying to write sentences and start trying to write stories.

The writing in Mission to Paris, sentence after sentence, page after page, is dazzling. If you are a John le Carr fan, this is definitely a novel for you.

I think sometimes we give people a lot of credit just because they're writing nice sentences even if it isn't adding up to much.

Hey. Not sure what’s going on-gonna go find out. Be careful and don’t do anything stupid. Don’t come after me-your better on your own. See you. F I sat on the edge of the bed, holding the note. Okay, so Fang had looked up vague in the dictionary and this was what it had said to write.

In my office in Florida I have, I think, 30 manuscript piles around the room. Some are screenplays or comic books or graphic novels. Some are almost done. Some I'm rewriting. If I'm working with a co-writer, they'll usually write the first draft. And then I write subsequent drafts.

A lot of times you get people writing wonderful sentences and paragraphs, and they fall in love with their prose style, but the stories really aren't that terrific.

I have a number of writers I work with regularly. I write an outline for a book. The outlines are very specific about what each scene is supposed to accomplish.

I write larger than life. It's what I do.

If it's commercial fiction that you want to write, it's story, story, story. You've got to get a story where if you tell it to somebody in a paragraph, they'll go, "Tell me more." And then when you start to write it, they continue to want to read more. And if you don't, it won't work.