31st July 2016 | for Creatives | writing, reaching your audience, Steve Coogan, comedy writing |
"It's more exciting to touch people than to make them laugh. ... If you manage to make laughter and emotion work side by side, it can be transcendent."
"I was used to uniting an audience with humour; this time, I wanted to unite an audience with humanity."
"I don't think an author should try specifically to write a series (or a stand-alone) due to any idea of the market. A concept either cries out to be written over the course of several books with a story arc big enough to support it—some threads that tie up satisfyingly in each book with others that demand more time and effort to resolve—or it doesn't. Writing two books where one is called for or three where a duology would do only means there's a sagging middle somewhere."
"Literature does not occur in a vacuum. It cannot be a monologue. It has to be a conversation, and new people, new readers, need to be brought into the conversation too."
"Even my publisher will say they just want more thrillers. That's what feeds my family. But I feel like if I did that, I wouldn't be being true to myself."
"Wear your heart on the page, and people will read to find out how you solved being alive."
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