Scenes I’d Like to See in a Romance Index
Who Wrote These Quotes: Me or Someone Famous?
Quiz #1
(1) "No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money."
Samuel Johnson or Vince Mooney
(2) "The best quotations in the world will still only tell you what you already know".
Dag Hammarskjold or Vince Mooney
(3) "A novel only exists while it’s being ‘played’ in a reader’s mind".
Jean-Paul Sartre or Vince Mooney
(4) "The problem with the school of hard knocks is that by the time you graduate, you’re punch drunk."
Grocho Marks or Vince Mooney
(5) "If characters really took on a life of their own, there would be a lot more murdered authors".
Agatha Christie or Vince Mooney
(6) "Writing is easy. You just sit down at a typewriter and open a vein.”
Red Simth or Vince Mooney
(7) "I have no problem getting ideas; it’s getting them to behave that’s the trick!"
Lewis Carroll or Vince Mooney
(8) "I’d rather know what to write than write what I know".
Jacqueline Susann or Vince Mooney
(9) "I write comedy because I like being entertained when I work".
Woody Allen Vince Mooney
(10) "Ideas are like stars: they are all pretty much the same until the writer joins them into constellations".
Jack London or Vince Mooney
(11) "Libraries are where they keep the books no one has time to read".
Ogden Nash or Vince Mooney
(12) “The difference between fiction and life? That's easy. Fiction has to make sense."
Tom Clancy or Vince Mooney
(13) “My characters don’t take on a life of their own. My characters give me a life of my own.”
Mickey Spillane or Vince Mooney
(14) "The first six revisions anyone could have written. But the seventh, that's Anatole France.”
Anatole France or Vince Mooney
(15) "Authors who have nothing to say are usually better at saying it."
Oscar Wilde or Vince Mooney
QUIZ #2
(1) Writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down.
Robert Frost or Vince Mooney
(2) As far as I’m concerned, “Writer’s Block” is an address in Manhattan.
Nora Ephron or Vince Mooney
(3)Writers like saints need to be a little touched.
Thomas Mann or Vince Mooney
(4) If you do not breathe through writing, if you do not cry out in writing, or sing in writing, then don't write, because our culture has no use for it.
Anais Nin or Vince Mooney
(5) I have never started a poem yet whose end I knew. Writing a poem is discovering.
Robert Frost or Vince Mooney
(6) Back-story, like back-talk, should be undertaken with trepanation.
Sol Stein or Vince Mooney
(7) There is nothing as boring as a writer writing what he knows.
Robert Silverberg or Vince Mooney
(8) Your first chapter sells your book. Your last chapter sells your next book.
Mickey Spillane or Vince Mooney
(9) Writing is a performance art with the reader doing the performance.
Woody Allen or Vince Mooney
(10) Every time my characters give me problems, I think of God. Then I pray for God.
Andrew Greeley or Vince Mooney
QUIZ #3
(1) I don’t create worlds. I edit reality.
Robert Heinlein or Vince Mooney
(2) Writers who write for other writers will always be short of readers.
E.B. White or Vince Mooney
(3) An original writer is not one who imitates nobody, but one whom nobody can imitate.
Chateaubriand or Vince Mooney
(4) You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.
Ray Bradbury or Vince Mooney
(5) People are like words. They change their meaning depending on those around them.
William James or Vince Mooney
(6) The role of a writer is not to say what we all can say, but what we are unable to say.
Anaïs Nin or Vince Mooney
(7) It’s more important to be interesting than original.
Mark Twain or Vince Mooney
(8) The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.
Sylvia Plath or Vince Mooney
(9) Writers like to think they are independent yet they often follow rules like lemmings.
Tony Hillerman or Vince Mooney
(10) I try to leave out the parts that people skip.
Elmore Leonard or Vince Mooney
(11) It’s never been about the first sentence; it’s about the opening situation. Think situations; not sentences.
E.B. White or Vince Mooney
(12) I'm not a very good writer, but I'm an excellent rewriter.
James Michener or Vince Mooney
(13) I love being a writer. What I can't stand is the paperwork.
Peter De Vries or Vince Mooney
(14) A critic can only review the book he has read, not the one which the writer wrote.
Mignon McLaughlin or Vince Mooney
(15) A novel can only exist in the mind of a reader and every rendition is different.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi or Vince Mooney
QUIZ #4
(1) I was writing before I could read. I’d fill notebooks with scribbles and my mother would pretend to read them to me.
Charles Dickens or Vince Mooney
(2) Storytelling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it.
Hannah Arendt or Vince Mooney
(3) Write down the thoughts of the moment. Those that come unsought for are commonly the most valuable.
Francis Bacon or Vince Mooney
(4) Readers want fiction to read like nonfiction and nonfiction to read like fiction.
Tom Clancy or Vince Mooney
(5) Be obscure clearly.
E.B. White or Vince Mooney
(6) I don’t tell readers what my characters are feeling, I don’t even show what my characters are feeling, I made the reader feel what my characters are feeling. It’s all about feelings and the ‘reading experience’.
Stephen King or Vince Mooney
(7) A writer is someone who can make a riddle out of an answer.
Karl Kraus or Vince Mooney
(8) There’s no such thing as ‘character-driven’ or ‘plot-driven’; all stories must be pulled to the climax by the power of anticipation.
Donald Maass or Vince Mooney
(9) Most editors are failed writers - but so are most writers.
T.S. Eliot or Vince Mooney
(10) I would feel a lot better if writing rules were written by successful writers.
Robert Benchley or Vince Mooney
(11) A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.
Thomas Mann or Vince Mooney
(12) A ‘sagging middle’ is a symptom of not knowing how to reward a reader for reading.
James Scott Bell or Vince Mooney
(13) The best style is the style you don't notice.
Somerset Maugham or Vince Mooney
(14) The amazing thing is not how many manuscript rejections there are; it’s how many books actually get published.
Max Perkins or Vince Mooney
(15) A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.
G.K. Chesterton or Vince Mooney
QUIZ #5
(1) Writing experts say there are no new plots. So? There are no new musical notes and no new letters in the alphabet. Creativity thrives on limitations.
Stephen Spielberg or Vince Mooney
(2) It took me fifteen years to discover I had no talent for writing, but I couldn't give it up because by that time I was too famous.
Robert Benchley or Vince Mooney
(3) Every author in some way portrays himself in his works, even if it be against his will.
Goethe or Vince Mooney
(4) Talent will only get a writer just so far; yea, like the last little distance over the finish line.
Fred Allen or Vince Mooney
(5) Trying to hear a writer’s voice is like expecting an echo to speak first.
Nora Roberts or Vince Mooney
(6) A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.
G.K. Chesterton or Vince Mooney
(7) The elephant in the room with every writers group is talent.
Linda Howard or Vince Mooney
(8) Writing books, like anatomy books, can tell you where everything goes but they can never breathe life into their subjects.
A. J. Cronin or Vince Mooney
(9) Every writing analogy hides the truth in interesting ways.
William F. Buckley or Vince Mooney
(10) My problem is not finding time to write; it’s finding time to do everything else.
Janet Evanovich or Vince Mooney
(11) Writing like life is not reducible to rules.
Barbara Samuels or Vince Mooney
(12) We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master.
Ernest Hemingway or Vince Mooney
(13) My words don’t have magic in them; they don’t even have words in them. Everything comes out of the mind of the reader.
Mary Renault or Vince Mooney
(14) The reason why so few good books are written is that so few people who can write know anything.
Walter Bagehot or Vince Mooney
(15) If there is a special Hell for writers it would be in the forced contemplation of their own works.
John Dos Passos or Vince Mooney
Quiz #6
(1) Writers don’t know any more than anyone else but because some people think they do, some writers also think they do.
P. G. Wodehouse or Vince Mooney
(2) In good writing, words become one with things.
Ralph Waldo Emerson or Vince Mooney
(3) Reading writing books is like reading diet books. You can make yourself think you’re doing something useful while at the same time you know you are not doing what you should be doing.
Carrie Fisher or Vince Mooney
(4) A story is told as much by silence as by speech.
Susan Griffin or Vince Mooney
(5) Some writers use urgency like it was an ice cream cone about to melt. It makes you eat faster but it doesn’t make it any more enjoyable.
Robert Parker or Vince Mooney
(6) People have forgotten how to tell a story. Stories don’t have a middle or an end anymore. They usually have a beginning that never stops beginning.
Steven Spielberg or Vince Mooney
(7) Writers are not writing books. They are creating value.
Adam Smith or Vince Mooney
(8) Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history. Plato or Vince Mooney
(9) If writers were rewarded for effort some of the worse writers would be making the most money. In fact, some of them are.
Edmond Wilson or Vince Mooney
(10) You can’t learn writing by writing hours on end any more than you can learn the piano by banging on the piano hours on end. You have to be taught and you have to be able to learn.
L. Frank Baum or Vince Mooney
(11) If you tell me, it’s an essay. If you show me, it’s a story.
Barbara Greene or Vince Mooney
(12) Writing, writing, writing, won’t make you a writer any more than cooking, cooking, cooking, will make you a chef.
Diane Mott Davidson or Vince Mooney
(13) There have been great societies that did not use the wheel, but there have been no societies that did not tell stories.
Ursula K. LeGuin or Vince Mooney
(14) I treat words like dominoes with each positioned exactly to fall on the next without a miss for the entire book.
Lilian Jackson Braun or Vince Mooney
(15) A writer’s brain is like a magician’s hat. If you’re going to get anything out of it, you have to put something in it first.
Louis L’Amour or Vince Mooney
Quiz #7
(1) A good character name is one a reader feels comfortqable with.
Nora Roberts or Vince Mooney
(2) Bring all your intelligence to bear on your beginning.
Elizabeth Bowen or Vince Mooney
(3) Marines make such good heroes because they are heroes.
Maureen Child or Vince Mooney
(4) First, find out what your hero wants, then just follow him!
Ray Bradbury or Vince Mooney
(5) My problem with Writing Groups is that when you adjust for conflicting advice, the combined wisdom of the Group is less than any one of its members.
Fern Michaels or Vince Mooney
(6) My husband was my critique partner long before I ever took up writing.
Jackie Collins or Vince Mooney
(7) When a man publishes a book, there are so many stupid things said that he declares he'll never do it again. The praise is almost always worse than the criticism.
Sherwood Anderson or Vince Mooney
(8) If a guy will jump out of an air plane into a forest fire to save someone he doesn’t know, he has the makings of someone worthy of my heroines.
Cheryl Wyatt or Vince Mooney
(9) Character gives us qualities, but it is in actions - what we do - that we are happy or the reverse....All human happiness and misery take the form of action.
Aristotle or Vince Mooney
(10) I don’t have a problem with writer’s block. I just tell the hero that if he doesn’t come up with something fast, I’ll kill him.
Sheila Connolly or Vince Mooney
(11) Characters, like ham actors, are always trying to make changes to the script. They just won’t let God play God.
Janis Reams Hudson or Vince Mooney
(12) Nora Roberts makes too much money. I think they should redistribute some of her sales to other authors.
P. J. O’Rourke or Vince Mooney
(13) I have been successful probably because I have always realized that I knew nothing about writing and have merely tried to tell an interesting story entertainingly.
Egar Rice Burroughs or Vince Mooney
(14) The reason 99% of all stories written are not bought by editors is very simple. Editors never buy manuscripts that are left on the closet shelf at home.
John Campbell or Vince Mooney
(15) I’ve been mistaken so often for other authors that I just autograph my books with my last name.
Joy Fielding or Vince Mooney
Quiz #8
(1) A good character name is one a reader feels comfortqable with.
Nora Roberts or Vince Mooney
(2) Bring all your intelligence to bear on your beginning.
Elizabeth Bowen or Vince Mooney
(3) Marines make such good heroes because they are heroes.
Maureen Child or Vince Mooney
(4) First, find out what your hero wants, then just follow him!
Ray Bradbury or Vince Mooney
(5) My problem with Writing Groups is that when you adjust for conflicting advice, the combined wisdom of the Group is less than any one of its members.
Fern Michaels or Vince Mooney
(6) My husband was my critique partner long before I ever took up writing.
Jackie Collins or Vince Mooney
(7) When a man publishes a book, there are so many stupid things said that he declares he'll never do it again. The praise is almost always worse than the criticism.
Sherwood Anderson or Vince Mooney
(8) If a guy will jump out of an air plane into a forest fire to save someone he doesn’t know, he has the makings of someone worthy of my heroines.
Cheryl Wyatt or Vince Mooney
(9) Character gives us qualities, but it is in actions - what we do - that we are happy or the reverse....All human happiness and misery take the form of action.
Aristotle or Vince Mooney
(10) I don’t have a problem with writer’s block. I just tell the hero that if he doesn’t come up with something fast, I’ll kill him.
Sheila Connolly or Vince Mooney
(11) Characters, like ham actors, are always trying to make changes to the script. They just won’t let God play God.
Janis Reams Hudson or Vince Mooney
(12) Nora Roberts makes too much money. I think they should redistribute some of her sales to other authors.
P. J. O’Rourke or Vince Mooney
(13) I have been successful probably because I have always realized that I knew nothing about writing and have merely tried to tell an interesting story entertainingly.
Edgar Rice Burroughs or Vince Mooney
(14) The reason 99% of all stories written are not bought by editors is very simple. Editors never buy manuscripts that are left on the closet shelf at home.
John Campbell or Vince Mooney
(15) I’ve been mistaken so often for other authors that I just autograph my books with my last name.
Joy Fielding or Vince Mooney
Quiz #9
(1) Fantasy's hardly an escape from reality. It's a way of understanding it.
Lloyd Alexander or Vince Mooney
(2) Writing is just the physical manifestation of what’s going on in the writer’s mind. It’s the mind that’s the wonder; not the writing
J. L. Austin or Vince Mooney
(3) A good title should be like a good metaphor. It should intrigue without being too baffling or too obvious.
Walker Percy or Vince Mooney
(4) Why can’t the really bad authors ever get writer’s block?
Will Rogers or Vince Mooney
(5) Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader- not the fact that it is raining, but the feeling of being rained upon."
E.L. Doctorow or Vince Mooney
(6) When writers work their magic, their words disappear.
Patricia Gaffney or Vince Mooney
(7) A book worth reading only in childhood is not worth reading even then.
C.S. Lewis or Vince Mooney
(8) Writing things down will no more get them out of your system than printing your WIP will get it out of your computer’s system. All you’ve done is created a second location for what is bothering you.
Nicholas Sparks or Vince Mooney
(9) The shorter and the plainer the better.
Beatrix Potter or Vince Mooney
(10) If you are a really entertaining story teller, you can write any story to any page length the publisher wants.
Jack London or Vince Mooney
(11) "A writer should create living people; people, not characters. A character is a caricature."
Ernest Hemingway or Vince Mooney
(12) I think a really good novel is one that’s exactly 225 page long.
Sophie Tucker or Vince Mooney
(13) "Manuscript: something submitted in haste and returned at leisure." Oliver Herford or Vince Mooney
(14) Rewriting is totally overrated. If you can’t cook a decent meal, what makes you think re-cooking it is going to make it much better?
Stephen King or Vince Mooney
(15) "If I didn't know the ending of a story, I wouldn't begin. I always write my last line, my last paragraph, my last page first."
Katherine Anne Porter or Vince Mooney
Quiz #10
1) “The difference between editors and lemmings? Lemmings don’t always run into the sea”.
Clifford Irving or Vince Mooney
(2) The title to a work of writing is like a house's front porch.... It should invite you to come on in.
Angela Giles Klocke or Vince Mooney
(3) "Authors would do better if they would listen more to their readers and less than to their characters".
James Scott Bell or Vince Mooney
(4) "Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way."
E.L. Doctorow or Vince Mooney
(5) “I felt so guilty about how badly I treat my characters, that I wrote myself into a story and let one of my character’s kill me.”
Mickey Spillane or Vince Mooney
(6) "The best children's book writers are not people who have kids, but people who write from the child within themselves."
Andrea Brown or Vince Mooney
(7) “Writing a novel is like trying to solve a very long mathematical equation. Changing anything can change everything else.”
Carl Sagan or Vince Mooney
(8) "Writing is rewriting. A writer must learn to deepen characters, trim writing, intensify scenes. To fall in love with the first draft to the point where one cannot change it is to greatly enhance the prospects of never publishing." Richard North Patterson or Vince Mooney
(9) "It is with words as with sunbeams -- the more they are condensed, the deeper they burn."
Robert Southey or Vince Mooney
(10) Writers used to learn their craft from reading the greats. Now they teach each other in support groups. Somehow I don’t see this as a way to greatness.
Barbara Kingsolver or Vince Mooney
(11) “If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.”
Elmore Leonard or Vince Mooney
(12) The less a writer has to say, the longer his books.
John Grisham or Vince Mooney
(13) "Great is the art of beginning, but greater is the art of ending." Longfellow or Vince Mooney
(14) The key to writing successful YA is to keep the adults out of the story as much as possible.
Beverly Cleary or Vince Mooney
(15) Mid-grade readers don’t have short attention spans, they just have low boredom tolerance.
Judith Viorst or Vince Mooney
