The American novelist and short story writer, F. Scott Fitzgerald, did not write a book about how to write. But he did share his ideas through letters to his daughter, his publisher, and other writers. Here are some of his suggestions and insights.*
“I could tell you plenty [of] books in which the main episode, around which swings the entire drama, is over and accomplished in four or five sentences.”
In Gatsby. . .I started “from the small focal point that impressed me–my own meeting with Arnold Rothstein.” [Rothstein, 1882-1928, was a gambler and racketeer who was murdered. The character of Meyer Wolfsheim is based on Rothstein.]
“All fine prose is based on the verbs carrying the sentences.”
“I am a professional thief, hot after the best methods of every writer in my generation.”
“The chief fault in your style is its lack of distinction. . . .And the only thing that will help you is poetry which is the most concentrated form of style.”
“I don’t think anyone can write succinct prose unless they have at least tried and failed to write a good iambic pentameter.”
“It takes half a dozen people to make a synthesis strong enough to create a fiction character.”
“When you tell an anecdote, tell it so your listeners can actually see the people you are talking about.”
“There comes a time when a writer writes only for certain people and where the opinions of others is of little less than no importance at all.”
“A novel either “is something entirely new and fresh and profoundly felt. . .or else it is a tour de force by a man of exceptional talent. . . .A great book is both.”
“The Great Gatsby had against it its length and its purely masculine interest.”
“If The Great Gatsby fails commercially it will be for one of two reasons or both. First, the title is only fair, rather bad than good. Second and most important the book contains no important women character, and women control the fiction market at present. I don’t think the unhappy end matters particularly.”
“Writing is a sheer paring away of oneself leaving always something thinner, barer, more meager.”
*These quotes come from F. Scott Fitzgerald on Writing, edited by Larry W. Phillips. NY: Scribner, 1985.
English Writing Teacher 