8 Chuck Palahniuk Quotes for Writers About Writing
To celebrate the release of his new book about writing, here are 8 Chuck Palahniuk quotes about writing from his 2007 interview with Writer’s Digest.
To celebrate the release of his new book about writing, here are 8 Chuck Palahniuk quotes about writing from his 2007 interview with Writer's Digest.
This week marks the release of Chuck Palahniuk's newest book, Consider This: Moments in My Writing Life After Which Everything Was Different. In this collection of essays, Palahniuk offers raw, darkly humorous insights you'd expect from the author of such books as Fight Club and Snuff. To pair with the advice in his new book, here are some of our favorite Chuck Palahniuk quotes about writing, taken from his October 2007 interview with Writer's Digest. You can read the full interview here.
I want to focus my energy on the thing I can control—which is the next book.
My writing has to excite people and depict or include their experiences.
You can always tell a more incredible fictional story if you present it with the structure of nonfiction.
I try to provide as many strong experiences as possible so that you’re left thinking you experienced or lived through what the characters have. The idea is to try to place the reader in that reality so they really feel like a character.
My first goal is to document an aspect of human experience that won’t get documented by any other form of media.
My third goal is to shock myself—to put something on the page that I never want my mother or nephews to see and that I cannot imagine reading in public. Because if you’re always going for the thing you can conceive of, it’s boring; you don’t force yourself to change.
A lot of my discoveries involve other people who bring me stuff that’s so outside my own experience. I find myself continually amazed, shocked and moved by how diverse people’s lives are.
If I write in public, every time I need to know what a character is doing with his hand or foot, I can look up and study people and find compelling gestures that I can harvest. Writing in public gives you that access to a junkyard of details all around you.
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About Amy Jones
Amy Jones is the Editor-in-Chief of Writer’s Digest and was the managing content director for WD Books. She is the editor of the Novel and Short Story Writer's Market and Children's Writer's and Illustrator's Market. Prior to joining the WD team, Amy was the managing editor for North Light Books and IMPACT Books. Like most WD staffers, Amy is a voracious reader and has a particular interest in literary fiction, historical fiction, steamy romance, and page-turning mysteries. When she’s not reading, Amy can be found daydreaming about Italy or volunteering at her local no-kill cat shelter. Find Amy on Twitter @AmyMJones_5.
