"Skillful story technique can sell even the most outrageous premises and protagonists. Check out Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita (1955) and Yann Martel’s Life of Pi (2001). They turned fringe into famous. You can, too."

"When writing fiction with high impact, there’s no subject matter too taboo, no character too eccentric, no emotional content too intense, no themes too difficult. It’s all in how you handle it. What overcomes all objections are characters who compel, stories that grip, and writing that amazes."

"If there were a manifesto for 21st century fiction writers, I hope it would go like this: Down with high-flown literature! Cast off genre servitude! The revolution is founded in authorial liberty. It regards story and art as equals."

"Who cares if you can’t be classified? The imaginations that matter are those glued to your pages."

"Conflicting feelings snare readers. They're a puzzle that demands solution, a cognitive dissonance that's too noisy to ignore."

"At genre conventions the debate over genre boundaries is almost a sport. Only two conclusions seem to me certain: Genre writers don't get enough respect, and when they do they don't get much respect from genre writers."

"Today, genre bending and blending is more the rule than the exception."

"They're the stars: the genre authors whose books sell vastly better than most; so much so that they're no longer labeled genre authors. They're brands."

"Whatever type of fiction you intend to write, the greatest challenge you face is to go your own way."

"Perhaps in part because they have fewer rules to follow, they must rely more on universal techniques and stay truer to their inner compasses. Without genre crutches to lean on they must walk the walk of true novelists. You can call them genre-bending if you like, but I call them genre-transcending. While they may establish a new category, they are genuine fiction masters."

"Out-of-category authors have begun a journey that I wish all novelists would take: a journey away from what is comfortable and convention-bound to fiction that is free, courageous, inventive, and influential because it's utterly unique. It's a place where novelists don't obey genre rules, but summon them when they're useful and bend them to their own purposes."

"The most important factor in provoking readers to spread the word about a story is an effect that the Penn researchers call 'awe.' This they defined as an 'emotion of self-transcendence, a feeling of admiration and elevation in the face of something greater than the self.' It demands of readers 'mental accommodation,' meaning readers must see the world in ways they didn't before." (artist)

"What actually gives fiction its power is that which is personal."

"Ask readers what they love about great novels and most often they mention great characters."

"If when we least expect it, you surprise us with ourselves, that impact is huge. When a setting is outside our experience yet also feels like our native land, that impact is lasting."

"High-impact 21st century fiction is built on unique voices, uncommon characters, and tales that can only be told by a particular author. They're sui generis."

"To infuse a novel with a significance that speaks to many requires, paradoxically, that you ignore what the public wants and focus instead on what matters to you."

"Literary/commercial fiction is a forecast of where fiction is heading in the 21st century. It's an approach to novel writing that eschews both snobby pretense and genre dogma. It is personal, impassioned, and even downright quirky, yet through its rebellious refusal to please, it paradoxically achieves universal appeal. It panders to no one. It speaks to everyone."

"High impact comes from a combination of two factors: great stories and beautiful writing. High-impact novels utilize what is best about literary and commercial fiction. They embrace a dichotomy. They do everything well and as a result sell astoundingly. The publishing industry has a convenient term for these wonder books: literary/commercial fiction."

"The more sudden are the turns, the steeper the climbs, and the most astounding the vistas, the more readers will connect to the landscape. The trip you take them on is one they'll take inside. It will feel like a memory, even though you invented it at the keyboard."

"High-impact fiction requires high courage. It means not only doing something different, but delving into what matters to you: what terrifies, outrages, grieves, inspires, hurts, and heals you."

"Deconstruct out-of-category novels and certain common factors emerge: characters we immediately care about, unique worlds, universal human experiences, high tension, plot layers, parallels, reversals, symbols, strong themes. But there's also an X factor: such fiction is personal, meaning that it directly reflects the author's own experience."

"When the values underneath your story make us uncomfortable but also somehow sit well with us, that impact is deep. "

"In our new century, literary fiction is selling the way that commercial novels are supposed to. ... Certain commercial novelists, on the other hand, are celebrated for their literary quality and simultaneously sell far better than most in their category."

"To write high-impact 21st-century fiction, you must start by becoming highly personal. Find your voice, yes, but more than that, challenge yourself to be unafraid, independent, open, aware, and true to your own heart. You must become your most authentic self."

"The characters who resonate most widely today don't merely reflect our times, they reflect ourselves. That's true whether we're talking about genre fare, historicals, satire, or serious literary stuff. Revealing human truths means transcending tropes, peering into the past with fresh eyes, unearthing all that is hidden, and moving beyond what is easy and comfortable to write what is hard and even painful to face."

What is success in the 21st century? It's novels that invent their own unique form, spring from a personal place, enact a passionate intent, and prove it by reaching a broad readership. It's both great reviews and great sales. It's moving hearts and changing minds. It's winning accolades and winning the devotion of readers. It's finding a way through your fiction to convey what you alone see, yet we all come to accept as the truth.

"Bond me to your characters.  Put them through a fearsome story.  Force me to feel what they feel.  Show me how they change.  Finally, make me see things your way."

"Aren't the people who have had the most influence on you the ones who caused you to look at things in a new light?  Bingo.  Be that novelist."

"Great fiction opens readers' hearts and, once they are captive and pliant, then opens their minds." (artist)

"Douse your main characters in gasoline.  Have your secondary characters throw Molotov cocktails.  You are a god hurling thunderbolts—or you can be."

"Write high-impact fiction ... Do it for you.  Do it for me.  The night is long.  The hours of darkness are dull.  We need more fireworks."

"Too many manuscripts tell their stories with timidity.  What's needed instead are explosive bursts of divinity: Eruptions of insight, booms of self-revelation, scenes that flare open in the dark, prose that sizzles like sparklers."

"I believe in sending characters down fearful paths.  Stories pushed beyond the limits of comfort stick in readers' imaginations."

"What gives a story high impact is that which is most personal and passionate in its author.  That includes your own fears.  They are your compass.  They're directing you toward what unsettles.  And also to what matters."

"You can't borrow awe.  You can't plot it into existence.  You can't provoke it through pretty words.  It has to come from you.  Your fiction will be awesome to the extent that you cut loose from convention, go to places that belong to you alone and embrace your godlike inner storyteller." (artist)

"When other novelists unsettle us, we praise them.  Yet when our own writing unsettles us, we worry."

"Novels are built day by day in writing sessions that can be either comfortable or courageous."

"For virtually all novelists, the challenge is to push farther, go deeper, and get mean and nasty."