Don Roff Quotes

Always mystify, torture, mislead, and surprise the audience as much as possible.

You cannot write your character until you know how he or she thinks, until you know what their philosophy is in the world that they occupy.

Regarding the creative: never assume you're the master, only the student. Your audience will determine if you're masterful.

The recipe for great art has always been misery and a good bowel movement.

Creativity and intelligence, rather than violence, are the best problem solvers.

A writer always writes.

I write fiction. It may have mystery, it may have horror, it may have fantasy, it may have love, but like life, it's all the same genre.

Successful writing is a slow, daily, meticulous form of mental illness.

Love it when a compelling new character kicks open your mental door, tracks mud across your brain, and props their feet up on your cerebrum.

You're never as good a writer as you think you are, and you're never as bad. Just keep reading and writing, writing, writing.

Always work with/surround yourself with people who help make you a better version of you. Kindly avoid those who don't.

You can be a writer who doesn't read everyday. But you're not fooling anyone. It shows, rather embarrassingly, in your work.

I've found the best way to revise your own work is to pretend that somebody else wrote it and then to rip the living shit out of it.

When you're writing what you love, it's the most fun you can have with your clothing still on, unless of course, you write naked.

When you print out your manuscript and read it, marking up with a pen, it sometimes feels like a criminal returning to the scene of a crime.

The best writers I've read possess oodles of self-doubt, yet claw their way up with each work and remain humble. Boastful ones, not so much.

Writing a story, regardless of length, begins always with a single word.

Mothman flew away from town, like a giant bat, and then disappeared from sight behind a thicket of skeletal autumn trees.

It's my belief that people enter your life at exactly the right time.

Write about the thing that scares you most or your most private confession and you'll never have a problem coming up with decent fiction.

A day of bad writing is always better than a day of no writing.

Writers often torture themselves trying to get the words right. Sometimes you must lower your expectations and just finish it.

I've found that busting your ass on a daily basis to make your art good, clear, and meaningful creates the most luck.

Any conversation including the mention of Roald Dahl, Ray Bradbury, or Emily Dickinson is one worth getting into or at least eavesdropping.

If you write a kid's book only for kids, then you have failed.

We often wait for that knock of opportunity, though I've found it's better to just grab a chainsaw and cut open your own fucking door.

Authors must spend months, years making fantasy believable in a single work while reality runs rampant and complete chaos elsewhere.

A migraine is the cockblock of writing.

Don't think about the writing process too much. Just do one thing: tell the motherfucking story.

When writing, I uncage KAT: Keep Adding Tension. Even if I don't know where the story's going, petting the KAT keeps it purring.

Even if you're in the thick of revising another work, write something new. Something small. It's important to keep telling yourself stories.

Yeah, episodic doesn't work. Your coolest character needs something big and meaningful to do. Otherwise, well, it's just narrative shit.

Writing a first-draft battle scene is akin to real combat—chaos, confusion, and you must keep your cool as you fire word bullets downrange.

If you treat your characters like people, they'll reward you by being fully developed individuals.

I write every day whether somebody pays me or not. I write every day whether or not self-doubt is kicking my ass. It's what writers must do.

Keep being bold on the page, and in life, and people cannot ignore you forever.

I don't use big words to show off because it's ostentatious.

Nothing's a better cure for writer's block than to eat ice cream right out of the carton.

Write for impact first, money second. If you do it the other way around, you’ll end up with less of either.

Audiences will admire your character’s strength but connect with them through their weakness.

If you focus on the humanity of your stories, your characters, then the horror will be stronger, scarier. Without the humanity, the horror becomes nothing more than a tawdry parlor trick. All flash and no magic, and worst of all, no heart.

If you schlep a shit job everyday, keep and feed a little secret life--whether it's writing, art, running, music, your thoughts. It's yours.

Fear and self-doubt are the deadly enemies of creativity. Don’t invite either into your mind.