Terry Pratchett was an English humourist and fantasy author. He is best known for his Discworld series that counts 41 novels. His other works include The Long Earth series (with Stephen Baxter) and Good Omens (with Neil Gaiman).
Terry Pratchett on Writing
“Making history, it turned out, was quite easy. It was what got written down. It was as simple as that.”
“Once you have your character sitting right there in your head, all you really need to do is wind them up, put them down, and simply write down what they do, say, or think.”
“In all seriousness, people think that it's the ideas that are important. Well, everyone has ideas, all the time. I tend to write mine down and remember them, but at some point you have to apply the bum to the seat and knock out about sixty five thousand words - that's how long a novel is.”
“You have to have really wide reading habits and pay attention to the news and just everything that's going on in the world: you need to. If you get this right, then the writing is a piece of cake.”
“Generally I start writing when I have even the smallest idea of how a book is going to go, because the physical process of writing itself keeps the mind active and focused on the job at hand.”
“Usually I write in about 5 drafts, but that simply means there are 5 definite times when I go in a linear fashion from the beginning to the end of the book.”
“When people say "How do you write a book, how does it all happen?" I say, you line things up, and you line them up as actually as you possibly can, but sooner or later the book has got momentum and it's moving along under that momentum.”
“If you get the characters right you've done sometimes nearly half the work. I sometimes find I get the characters right then the characters will often help me write the book.”
