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The reader really has to step up to the plate and read a short story.

Among the many problems which beset the novelist, not the least weighty is the choice of the moment at which to begin his novel.

I'm always excited to carry more and more weight and responsibility within a story.

The pressures to get the story first, if wrong, are greater sometimes than the pressures to get the story right, if late.

Even the most complicated stories start with a very simple premise.

The short story is a very natural mode of storytelling; most stories can be told quickly. I always think of them as like a tightrope walk - every sentence is a step along the rope, and you can so easily misplace your step and break your neck.

I remember doing 'The Long Fall of One-Eleven Heavy,' and I'd been reporting that story for a long time; I had a lot of good facts, but I had no story. I didn't know what the story was.

Every story has its demands.

Write out the story - rapidly, fluently, and not too critically - following the second or narrative-order synopsis. Change incidents and plot whenever the developing process seems to suggest such change, never being bound by any previous design.

A story should have a beginning, a middle and an end, but not necessarily in that order.