“To write for others,’ she thought, ‘it seems one must be a spy—or a teller of tales.”
Source: Neveryóna (1983), Chapter 11, “Of Family Gatherings, Grammatology, More Models, and More Mysteries” (p. 313)
“I am the teller of the tale, not the creator of the story.”
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Michael Powell 16
English film director 1905–1990Related quotes
“A good writer is basically a story teller, not a scholar or a redeemer of mankind.”
Isaac Bashevis Singer
(1902–1991) Polish-born Jewish-American author
Patrick Rothfuss
(1973) American fantasy writer
On the progress of The Wise Man's Fear in "Concerning the Release of Book Two" (26 February 2009) http://blog.patrickrothfuss.com/2009/02/concerning-the-release-of-book-two/
Official site
Context: My book is different.
In case you hadn't noticed, the story I'm telling is a little different. It's a little shy on the Aristotelian unities. It doesn't follow the classic Hollywood three-act structure. It's not like a five-act Shakespearean play. It's not like a Harlequin romance.
So what *is* the structure then? Fuck if I know. That's part of what's taking me so long to figure out. As far as I can tell, my story is part autobiography, part hero's journey, part epic fantasy, part travelogue, part faerie tale, part coming of age story, part romance, part mystery, part metafictional-nested-story-frame-tale-something-or-other.
I am, quite frankly, making this up as I go. If I get it right, I get something like The Name of the Wind. Something that makes all of us happy.
But if I fuck it up, I'll end up with a confusing tangled mess of a story.
Now I'm not trying to claim that I'm unique in this. That I'm some lone pioneer mapping the uncharted storylands. Other authors do it too. My point is that doing something like this takes more time that writing another shitty, predictable Lord of the Rings knockoff.
Sometimes I think it would be nice to write a that sort of book. It would be nice to be able to use those well-established structures like a sort of recipe. A map. A paint-by-numbers kit.
It would be so much easier, and quicker. But it wouldn't be a better book. And it's not really the sort of book I want to write.
Norman Rockwell
(1894–1978) Armatian
As quoted in Fodor's New England (2008) by Debbie Harmsen, p. 194
“As a story teller, Scott is unrivalled; he would have made the fortune of a cafe at Damascus.”
Letitia Elizabeth Landon
(1802–1838) English poet and novelist
Literary Remains
Rajinikanth
(1950) Indian actor
G M Adishesh, his friend
You can see God in him at times (22 December 1999)
Source: Death in the Afternoon (1932), Ch. 11