Gary Provost Quotes

This sentence has five words. Here are five more words. Five-word sentences are fine. But several together become monotonous. Listen to what is happening. The writing is getting boring. The sound of it drones. It’s like a stuck record. The ear demands some variety. Now listen. I vary the sentence length, and I create music. Music. The writing sings. It has a pleasant rhythm, a lilt, a harmony. I use short sentences. And I use sentences of medium length. And sometimes, when I am certain the reader is rested, I will engage him with a sentence of considerable length, a sentence that burns with energy and builds with all the impetus of a crescendo, the roll of the drums, the crash of the cymbals–sounds that say listen to this, it is important.

This sentence has five words. Here are five more words. Five-word sentences are fine. But several together become monotonous. Listen to what is happening. The writing is getting boring. The sound of it drones. It's like a stuck record. The ear demands some variety. Now listen. I vary the sentence length, and I create music. Music. The writing sings. It has a pleasant rhythm, a lilt, a harmony. I use short sentences. And I use sentences of medium length. And sometimes, when I am certain the reader is rested, I will engage him with a sentence of considerable length, a sentence that burns with the energy and builds with all the impetus of a crescendo, the roll of the drums, the crash of the cymbals - sounds that say listen to this, it is important.

Hear how the use of the wrong word wakes you from your reading spell.

When you are describing things and places the reader has seen, keep description short by reminding him of the pictures he has on file. When you are describing things and places the reader has not seen, keep description short by using pieces of the pictures he has on file to create new pictures.

If you write well and honestly, with character rising from background and action springing from character, and if you remain true to your vision of life, then theme will emerge in the reading process. And if you write what you believe, and only what you believe, the theme will inevitably be consistent.

Though the daily paper contains much that is swill, it also contains some good writing. From it you can learn to write leanly, you can learn to get to the point, and you can learn to compress several facts into a single clear sentence.

Someone once said that if you steal from one writer, it’s called plagiarism, but if you steal from several, it’s called research. So steal from everybody, but steal only a sentence or a phrase at a time. If you use much more than that, you must get permission and then give credit.

Writing Tools: 55 Essential Strategies for Every Writer by Roy Peter Clark Writing to Persuade by Trish Hall On Writing Well by William Zinsser 100 Ways to Improve Your Writing by Gary Provost On Writing by Stephen King

To write is not necessary to communicate. Communication occur in the mind of the reader.

Adjectives do for nouns what adverbs do for verbs;

continue to be amazed at how reasonably intelligent individuals can actually believe their claims of innocence and not recognize the blatant self-rationalizations, selective perceptions, distortions of reality, denial, and self-deception in their

Cass was her husband, and the fragile bond between them had been built not on love or romance, or even sex. It floated on, it swam in, it drowned under, alcohol. They were drinking buddies long before Cass moved in with Dee,

took to the business like a porpoise to the sea. Augustine Paspalakis, unfortunately, did not share Lisa’s affinity for the finer points of bookkeeping. He once told his daughter, “What I know about money is I take some in and I put in the safe. In the morning I take the money out of the safe and I put it in the bank.” Steno was a man who could add up any column of figures in his head, but start talking debits and ledgers with him and his eyes would glaze over. To him accounting meant you had to turn