Best 40 quotes of Don Roff on MyQuotes

Always mystify, torture, mislead, and surprise the audience as much as possible.

Always work with/surround yourself with people who help make you a better version of you. Kindly avoid those who don't.

Any conversation including the mention of Roald Dahl, Ray Bradbury, or Emily Dickinson is one worth getting into or at least eavesdropping.

Authors must spend months, years making fantasy believable in a single work while reality runs rampant and complete chaos elsewhere.

Fear and self-doubt are the deadly enemies of creativity. Don’t invite either into your mind.

If you focus on the humanity of your stories, your characters, then the horror will be stronger, scarier. Without the humanity, the horror becomes nothing more than a tawdry parlor trick. All flash and no magic, and worst of all, no heart.

It’s hard to land a devastating jab/cross/hook/uppercut combo to your reader’s imagination when you’re telegraphing your punches.

Love it when a compelling new character kicks open your mental door, tracks mud across your brain, and props their feet up on your cerebrum.

Regarding the creative: never assume you're the master, only the student. Your audience will determine if you're masterful.

The recipe for great art has always been misery and a good bowel movement.

When you print out your manuscript and read it, marking up with a pen, it sometimes feels like a criminal returning to the scene of a crime.

When you're writing what you love, it's the most fun you can have with your clothing still on, unless of course, you write naked.

Write about the thing that scares you most or your most private confession and you'll never have a problem coming up with decent fiction.

Writers often torture themselves trying to get the words right. Sometimes you must lower your expectations and just finish it.

Writing a story, regardless of length, begins always with a single word.

Audiences will admire your character’s strength but connect with them through their weakness.

Creativity and intelligence, rather than violence, are the best problem solvers.

Don't think about the writing process too much. Just do one thing: tell the motherfucking story.

Even if you're in the thick of revising another work, write something new. Something small. It's important to keep telling yourself stories.

Fucking government suck-ass equipment,' Kohlman said. 'Everything the Army uses was made by the lowest bidder. Probably got free toasters with that Podunk piece of shit.

I don't use big words to show off because it's ostentatious.

If you don't love what you're writing, stop right now: it's not worth your time and certainly not the reader's.

If you're the 'brilliant writer' in the room, you're in the wrong writers' room.

If you schlep a shit job everyday, keep and feed a little secret life--whether it's writing, art, running, music, your thoughts. It's yours.

If you write a kid's book only for kids, then you have failed.

It's better to write something, anything, than to starve the monster. The monster must feed. And it will feed on your soul if not your words. Its appetite is insatiable. Write to save yourself from the monster.

I've found that busting your ass on a daily basis to make your art good, clear, and meaningful creates the most luck.

Mothman flew away from town, like a giant bat, and then disappeared from sight behind a thicket of skeletal autumn trees.

Sometimes the wind made her feel like she was not alone. The icy blasts there seemed to whisper and call her name; they had done so tonight. Not only whispered her name but told her to do it. A frigid voice from somewhere in those January howls had told her to kill them, kill them all.

Successful writing is a slow, daily, meticulous form of mental illness.

The best writers I've read possess oodles of self-doubt, yet claw their way up with each work and remain humble. Boastful ones, not so much.

We often wait for that knock of opportunity, though I've found it's better to just grab a chainsaw and cut open your own fucking door.

When writing, I uncage KAT: Keep Adding Tension. Even if I don't know where the story's going, petting the KAT keeps it purring.

Write for impact first, money second. If you do it the other way around, you’ll end up with less of either.

Writing a first-draft battle scene is akin to real combat—chaos, confusion, and you must keep your cool as you fire word bullets downrange.

Writing is dreaming with your eyes open — and your heart on fire.

Yeah, episodic doesn't work. Your coolest character needs something big and meaningful to do. Otherwise, well, it's just narrative shit.

You can be a writer who doesn't read everyday. But you're not fooling anyone. It shows, rather embarrassingly, in your work.

You cannot write your character until you know how he or she thinks, until you know what their philosophy is in the world that they occupy.

You're never as good a writer as you think you are, and you're never as bad. Just keep reading and writing, writing, writing.