Quotes About Plot

I love thrillers.

The core plot of 'Mercury' is so gripping that when I thought of making it as a silent film, it only made it more interesting. Once I finished writing the first draft, making a silent film that's both thrilling and engaging seemed possible. When the film team read the final script, they felt the same.

Book four is tentatively titled 'The Skull Throne ,' and book five is 'The Core .' It's kind of hard to talk much about them without giving away things from 'Daylight War,' however.

Writing a mystery is like drawing a picture and then cutting it into little pieces that you offer to your readers one piece at a time, thus allowing them the chance to put the jigsaw puzzle together by the end of the book.

Language is the ticket to plot and character, after all, because both are built out of language.

Action fiction is driven more by what than by who. Put that ticking nuclear suitcase under Manhattan, and it's relatively easy to create suspense. Literary fiction is driven more by who than by what.

I STAND here and watch the people of this world: all against one and one against all, angry, arguing, plotting and scheming. Then one day, suddenly, they die. And each gets one plot of ground: four feet wide, six feet long. If you can scheme your way out of that plot, I'll set the stone that immortalizes your name.

Everything in a science-fiction novel should be mentioned at least twice (in at least two different contexts).

Occasionally a particular word or phrase in a letter or diary has sparked an entire plot - like an echo from history, still very alive.

I am more one for the story, I think, than the action.

How do I happen to believe in God? . . . Writing novels, I got into the habit of looking for plots. After awhile, I began to suspect that my own life had a plot. And after awhile more, I began to suspect that life itself has a plot. —FREDERICK BUECHNER

a story's plot has a beginning, middle, and end consisting of a sequence of events developed around a particular conflict or gradual unveiling. As far as worship-as-story is concerned, this guiding story arc has already been provided for us in the church calendar or liturgical year. It's not a plot we're creating from scratch.

I do want to write about Jane Whitefield again, but only when I have a good enough idea - something I've figured out about her that's news and that's worth a reader's time.

Try to make the time frame the minimum the story will permit.

If I were ever to make an old-fashioned film noir—with a cynical plot full of intrigue, violence, and sudden twists, filmed on dark and menacing streets in misty black and white—I would shoot it in Havana.

Life to most of us is just a jumble of sensations, like a very bad film with no plot, no real beginning and end.

I must think of something foolproof for a fool.

PLOT is CHARACTER revealed by ACTION.

A beginning is that which does not itself follow anything by causal necessity, but after which something naturally is or comes to be. An end, on the contrary, is that which itself naturally follows some other thing, either by necessity, or as a rule, but has nothing following it. A middle is that which follows something as some other thing follows it. A well constructed plot, therefore, must neither begin nor end at haphazard, but conform to these principles.

The plot, then, is the first principle, and, as it were, the soul of a tragedy; Character holds the second place.

By myth I mean the arrangement of the incidents

Every tragedy consists in tying and untying of a knot.

a poet must be a composer of plots rather than of verses

A well constructed plot should, therefore, be single in its issue, rather than double as some maintain. The change of fortune should be not from bad to good, but, reversely, from good to bad.