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The book works better if i know everything i can about the ending. not just what happens, but how it happens and what the language is; not just the last sentence, but enough of the sentences surrounding that last sentence to know what the tone of voice is. i imagined it as something almost musical. then you are writing toward something; you know the sound of your voice at the end of the story. that's how you want to sound in those final sentences: the degree that it is uplifting or not, the degree that it is melancholic or not.

-John Irving

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The Book Works Better If I Know

John Irving

The book works better if i know everything i can about the ending. not just what happens, but how it happens and what the language is; not just the last sentence, but enough of the sentences surrounding that last sentence to know what the tone of voice is. i imagined it as something almost musical. then you are writing toward something; you know the sound of your voice at the end of the story. that's how you want to sound in those final sentences: the degree that it is uplifting or not, the degree that it is melancholic or not.

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    <p style="font-size: 1.2rem; font-style: italic; margin-bottom: 10px;">"the book works better if i know everything i can about the ending. not just what happens, but how it happens and what the language is; not just the last sentence, but enough of the sentences surrounding that last sentence to know what the tone of voice is. i imagined it as something almost musical. then you are writing toward something; you know the sound of your voice at the end of the story. that&#039;s how you want to sound in those final sentences: the degree that it is uplifting or not, the degree that it is melancholic or not."</p>
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Topic

Uplifting Book Writing

More From John Irving

I turn sentences around. that's my life. i write a sentence and then i turn it around. then i look at it and i turn it around again. then i have lunch. then i come back in and write another sentence. then i have tea and turn the new sentence around. then i read the two sentences over and turn them both around. then i lie down on my sofa and think. then i get up and throw them out and start from the beginning.

One of the qualities of writing that is not much stressed is its problem-solving aspect, having to do with the presentation of material: how to structure it, what sort of sentences (direct, elliptical, simple or compound, syntactically elaborate), what tone (in art, "tone" is everything), pacing. paragraphing is a way of dramatization, as the look of a poem on a page is dramatic; where to break lines, where to end sentences.

You will want a book which contains not man's thoughts, but god's - not a book that may amuse you, but a book that can save you - not even a book that can instruct you, but a book on which you can venture an eternity - not only a book which can give relief to your spirit, but redemption to your soul - a book which contains salvation, and conveys it to you, one which shall at once be the saviour's book and the sinner's.

I'm of the opinion that the real is imagined and the imagined is quite real. the real is imagined, in the sense that we shape our stories, so anything that even happens on the news gets shaped in a certain way and gets a texture, and that the imagined can be real.

Even if nobody's singing, just when you talk, you're singing. i'll meet somebody and say, "oh, i'm tone-deaf." i say, "you're not tone-deaf, because if you were tone-deaf you would speak like that. but you're 'oh, i'm tone-deaf.' you already sang a song to me."

I don't begin a novel until i have written, not just the last sentence, but usually, as a result thereof, many of the surrounding final paragraphs, so that in addition to knowing what happens, i know what the voice is.

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The greatest temptation for the like of us is: to renounce violence, to repent, to make peace with oneself. most revolutionaries fell before this temptation, from spartacus to danton and dostoevsky; they are the classical form of betrayal of the cause. the temptations of god were always more dangerous for mankind than those of satan. as long as chaos dominates the world, god is an anachronism; and every compromise with one’s own conscience is perfidy. when the accursed inner voice speaks to you, hold your hands over your ears….

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