Quote

Some writers can produce marvelous plots without planning it out, but I can't. In particular I need to know the structure of a novel: what's going to happen in each chapter and each scene.

Emma Donoghue

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Emma Donoghue
Age: 55
Born: 1969
Born: October 24
Literary Historian
Novelist
Playwright
Screenwriter
Writer
Dublin city
Going
Produce
Chapter
Novel
Chapters
Particular
Marvelous
Happen
Plot
Happens
Planning
Without
Structure
Need
Writers
Needs
Scene
Plots

More quotes by Emma Donoghue

Image
A memoir is always the most authentic telling of a situation, but a novel gets to different places.
Emma Donoghue
Image
I'm really not one of these procrastinators who cleans the house in order to put off writing, but life gets in the way.
Emma Donoghue
Image
I must say, in the case of Room, both the book and the film, I don't think being a lesbian author held me back at all.
Emma Donoghue
Image
I've been in a long and happy relationship for 22 years and it's never inspired me to write anything. It's too good - nothing to say. Problems, conflict, that's what makes for good stories.
Emma Donoghue
Image
There are some tales not for telling, whether because they are too long, too precious, too laughable, too painful, too easy to need telling or too hard to explain. After all, after years and travels my secrets are all I have left to chew on in the night.
Emma Donoghue
Image
The sound of the pages turning was the sound of magic. The dry liquid feel of paper under fingertips was what magic felt like.
Emma Donoghue
Image
I've certainly seen stats that if you have a woman director or a woman screenwriter, the number of female characters goes way up.
Emma Donoghue
Image
...sentences swallowed and sung back and swallowed all over again. She was made entirely out of words.
Emma Donoghue
Image
I remember manners, that's when people are scared to make other persons mad.
Emma Donoghue
Image
She leaped into space, high, higher than she'd ever been in her life. She came down with a clean snap, and the crowd scattered like birds from the swing of her feet.
Emma Donoghue
Image
I'm really aware that in fiction, women are pretty much equal. There's a lot of very successful women novelists. Not so much [for women writers working] in film.
Emma Donoghue
Image
Nowadays, 'invisibility' was supposed to be the big problem, but the way I saw it was, all that mattered was to be visible to yourself.
Emma Donoghue
Image
I read three books a week.
Emma Donoghue
Image
Goodbye, Room. I wave up at Skylight. Say goodbye, I tell Ma. Goodbye, Room. Ma says it but on mute. I look back one more time. It's like a crater, a hole where something happened. Then we go out the door.
Emma Donoghue
Image
When I was a little kid I thought like a little kid, but now I'm five I know everything
Emma Donoghue
Image
For all that being a parent is normal statistically, it's not normal psychologically. It produces some of the most extreme emotions you'll ever have...
Emma Donoghue
Image
For all the books in his possession, he still failed to read the stories written plain as day in the faces of the people around him.
Emma Donoghue
Image
And as the years flowed by, some villagers told travelers of a beast and a beauty who lived in the castle and could be seen walking on the battlements, and others told of two beauties, and others, of two beasts.
Emma Donoghue
Image
Change for your own sake, if you must, not for what you imagine another will ask of you.
Emma Donoghue
Image
I'm finding that success is way more time-consuming than failure ever was.
Emma Donoghue