Quotes About Plot

I always start with characters rather than with a plot, which many critics would say is very obvious from the lack of plot in my films—although I think they do have plots—but the plot is not of primary importance to me, the characters are.

There are thirty-two ways to write a story, and I've used every one, but there is only one plot – things are not as they seem.

Arithmetic is the death of story.

In his daydreams he was busy planning how to ask Kate to marry him someday. He thought, as a fourth-generation undertaker, it might be proper to say simply, "Kate, how would you like to be buried in the Wright family plot beside me?

Perhaps I am the victim of some mysterious political, religious or financial machination—some vast and shadowy plot, whose ramifications are so obscure as to appear to the uninitiated to be quite outside reason, requiring, for instance, something as apparently senseless as the destruction of everybody with red hair or with a mole on his left leg.

Time, in general, has always been a central obsession of mine - what it does to people, how it can constitute a plot all on its own. So naturally, I am interested in old age.

I'm not really a plot writer - I'm more interested in the characters and sort of small events that propel the story forward.

I'd love to see more novels and short stories where the characters have their own folklore that isn't the Plot-Bearing Prophecy of Doom.

The conventional Aristotelian plot proceeds by means of a protagonist, an antagonist, and a series of events comprising a rising action, climax and denouement.

Britain in 2018 has the feel of a Netflix drama approaching its season finale. It's the classic 'how on earth does anyone get out of this one?' kind of cliffhanger, with all of the key protagonists confronted by their nemesis.

The downside of doing a multi-protagonist movie is that you don't get to service each character as you would if they were the central protagonist of the movie.

Character is always my driving force. And to tell a good story and to provide an entertaining read.

So that many characters which passed as heroic, or at least presentable, in the kindly remoteness of legend, reveal some strange weakness when brought suddenly into the light. When the tradition is Satyric, as here, the same process produces almost an opposite effect. It is somewhat as though the main plot of a gross and jolly farce were pondered over and made more true to human character till it emerged as a refined and rather pathetic comedy.

Character is plot, plot is character.

In most good stories it is the character's personalty that creates the action of the story.

When you can state the theme of a story, when you can separate it from the story itself, then you can be sure the story is not a very good one.

I can always tell when a filmmaker doesn't care about his or her characters; they just care about setting them up to kill them off.

In 'Notting Hill,' I was part of a whole plot line over six scenes that was completely taken out. That was rather depressing.

Fanboys are a creator's blessing and curse. If a fanboy likes you, they love you. Obsessively. If you cross them with some plot point or story direction they reject, expect to be wholly and continually eviscerated across the Internet.

'High Concept' means a book or a film whose core idea can be stated in a single sentence, such as 'Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito are twins.' Or, 'Arnold is pregnant.'

I think 'The Avengers' is a Black Widow movie. She saves the day. And if you take her out, the plot does not function.

Integration is the biggest con job ever pulled on any group of people, any nationality in the world. It was a plot by white liberals to gain black political power for themselves and their wild ideas, and for a few black bourgeoisie who were paid to exercise leverage as black spokesmen.

I had to write something and couldn't think of a plot, so I decided to write a Cinderella story because it already had a plot! Then, when I thought about Cinderella's character, I realized that she was too much of a goody-two-shoes for me, and I would hate her before I finished ten pages.

A lot of times with novels, you can get a really deep, engaging story, but there's not a lot happening, frankly. Those books tend to be super-literary and dense, and they require a lot of commitment, and that's not necessarily a bad thing, but if you want fast-moving action and gore and plot and excitement, you can get shorted on that.