01c. 1952 ADOne dictum I had learned on the battlefields of France in a far distant war: You cannot save the world, but you might save the man in front of you, if you work fast enough.Diana Gabaldon / quote ↗
02c. 1952 ADSoldiers manage by dividing themselves. They're one man in the killing, another at home, and the man that dandles his bairn on his knee has nothing to do wi' the man who crushed his enemy's throat with his boot, so he tells himself, sometimes successfully.Diana Gabaldon / quote ↗
03c. 1952 ADIt's the anonymity of the war that makes the killing possible. When the nameless dead are named again on tombstone and on cenotaph, then they regain the identity they lost as soldiers, and take their place in grief and memory, the ghosts of sons and lovers.Diana Gabaldon / quote ↗
04c. 1952 ADI heard you went to Ireland...I haven't seen it in many years. Is it still green then, and beautiful?Wet as a bath sponge and mud to the knees but, aye, it was green enough.Diana Gabaldon / quote ↗
05c. 1952 ADI'll tell ye, Sassenach; if ever I feel the need to change my manner of employment, I dinna think I'll take up attacking women - it's a bloody hard way to make a living.Diana Gabaldon / quote ↗
06c. 1952 ADOnce you've chosen a man, don't try to change him, I wrote, with more confidence. It can't be done. More important -- don't let him try to change you. He can't do it either, but men always try.Diana Gabaldon / quote ↗
07c. 1952 ADHe was generally aware that he had been blessed in her beauty; even in her usual homespun, knee-deep in mud from her garden, or stained and fierce with the blood of her calling, the curve of her bones spoke to his own marrow, and those whisky eyes could make him drunk with a glance. Besides, the mad collieshangie of her hair made him laugh.Diana Gabaldon / quote ↗
08c. 1952 ADNot the historians. No, not them. Their greatest crime is that they presume to know what happened, how things come about, when they have only what the past chose to leave behind-- for the most part, they think what they were meant to think, and it's a rare one that sees what really happened, behind the smokescreen of artifacts and paper...No, the fault lies with the artists...The writers, the singers, the tellers of tales. It's them that take the past and re-create it to their liking. Them that could take a fool and give you back a hero, take a sot and make him a king...Liars?...or sorcerers? Do they see the bones in the dust of the earth, see the essence of a thing that was, and clothe it in new flesh, so the plodding beast reemerges as a fabulous monster?Diana Gabaldon / quote ↗
09c. 1952 ADIt's always better if they see. Then they don't imagine things. So I didn't imagine, I remembered.Diana Gabaldon / quote ↗
10c. 1952 ADYou're beautiful to me, Jamie,” I said softly, at last. “So beautiful, you break my heart.Diana Gabaldon / quote ↗
11c. 1952 ADFor several days, I slept. Whether this was a necessary part of physical recovery, or a stubborn retreat from waking reality, I do not know, but I woke only reluctantly to take a little food, falling at once back into a stupor of oblivion, as though the small, warm weight of broth in my stomach were an anchor that pulled me after it, down through the murky fathoms of sleep.Diana Gabaldon / quote ↗
12c. 1952 ADTo some extent, emotions are universal and can be treated that way; no matter what the participants’ orientation or preference, they have sex for the same reasons and can experience the same array of emotions in the process. But there are three important distinctions to be made: 1. The logistics of physiology 2. The basics of sexual attraction 3. Cultural impact on character and situationDiana Gabaldon / quote ↗
13c. 1952 ADMen have external genitalia, while women have internal genitalia. This simple difference makes a lot of difference in how they write about themselves—and how you might write about your characters. Male writers don’t often address internal sensation in a character, because they don’t experience it (and probably often don’t realize consciously that it’s there). This accounts for a lot of Really Terrible sex scenes written by men (if you look at the “Bad Sex-Scene Awards” in any given year, you’ll see that the vast majority are done by male writers).Diana Gabaldon / quote ↗
14c. 1952 ADThere’s a little trick called the Rule of Three: if you use any three of the five senses, it will make the scene immediately three-dimensional.Diana Gabaldon / quote ↗
15c. 1952 ADGood sex scene is about the exchange of emotions, not bodily fluidsDiana Gabaldon / quote ↗
16c. 1952 ADIf you can’t look a line of dialogue in the face and say exactly why it’s there—take it out or change it.Diana Gabaldon / quote ↗
17c. 1952 ADDon’t go overboard in avoiding “said.” Basically, “said” is the default for dialogue, and a good thing, too; it’s an invisible word that doesn’t draw attention to itself.Diana Gabaldon / quote ↗
18c. 1952 ADYou want to anchor the scene with physical details, but by and large it’s better to use sensual details rather than overtly sexual ones.Diana Gabaldon / quote ↗
19c. 1952 ADYou don’t need to know the purpose as you write, but when you read over something you’ve written, you should be able to point to any given element—be that a line of dialogue, a descriptive phrase, a plot point—and say why it’s there.Diana Gabaldon / quote ↗
20c. 1952 ADAs a rule of thumb, four consecutive lines of dialogue is about as much as you want to have without a tag.Diana Gabaldon / quote ↗
21c. 1952 ADDon’t let characters talk pointlessly—they only talk if there’s something to say.Diana Gabaldon / quote ↗
22c. 1952 ADDialogue doesn’t take place in a vacuum. Dialogue is contradictory, in that it can either speed up or slow down a passage.Diana Gabaldon / quote ↗
23c. 1952 ADPointing out the emotion in a scene is like laughing at your own jokes.Diana Gabaldon / quote ↗
24c. 1952 ADIf there’s true emotional content in a situation between characters, all you do is reveal it.Diana Gabaldon / quote ↗
