Quotes About Plot

The architecture of a story can be a little bit different if it's a true story.

Truth may be stranger than fiction on a plot and narrative basis, but fiction can investigate tone in a way that things based on a true story can't.

My conception of it was that in a normal film you have a story with different movements that program, develop, go a little bit off the trunk, come back, and end.

With 'Duplicity', I was a little bit like, 'This isn't that hard of a movie.' This isn't like some huge brain trust of a movie. You gotta be a little bit awake to follow the plot, but it's really just a kind of light entertainment. It's like those Cary Grant movies, which are not meant to be anything other than diverting. In a nice way.

I always think I know the way a novel will go. I write maps on oversized art pads like the kind I carried around in college when I was earnest about drawing. I need to have some idea of the shape of the novel, where its headed, so that I can proceed with confidence. But the truth is my characters start doing and saying things I don't expect.

If you let the plot be determined by what you feel is in the character's mind at that point, it may not turn out to be a very good play, but at least it will be a play where people are behaving in a kind of truthful way.

The crime part is the engine that moves the narrative and allows me to write the other things I want to write about.

When I used to teach creative writing, I would tell the students to make their characters want something right away.

It's just about trying to find material where I'm doing more than just being a plot device. I want to actually get to do scenes that go to interesting places and are challenging to me.

I try not to divide plot and character. I get to know a character by what they want and fear and how those internal forces play out in their lives.

It's one thing to not want an evil-sorcerer type villain in your story, but it's another thing to avoid having any sort of antagonist at all. A story without an antagonist gets weird pretty quick.

Most crime fiction plots are not ambitious enough for me. I want something really labyrinthine with clues and puzzles that will reward careful attention.

I'll tell you the secret. When you begin with a character, you want to begin by creating a villain.

To uncover the plot of your story, don't ask what should happen, but what should go wrong. To uncover the meaning of your story, don't ask what the theme is, but rather, what is discovered. Characters making choices to resolve tension—that's your plot. If your protagonist has no goal, makes no choices, has no struggle to overcome, you have no plot.

To uncover the plot of your story, don't ask what should happen, but what should go wrong. To uncover the meaning of your story, don't ask what the theme is, but rather, what is discovered. Characters making choices to resolve tension—that's your plot.

A story might be character-centered (revolving around personal growth), plot-centered (relating to tasks to be completed), or relationship-centered (focused on developing connections between people), but the story is never driven forward simply by character studies or the procession of events occurring.

No character in a soap is indispensable.

They're getting me involved in intrigue again, and I think it follows a classic formula in a soap opera.

I never, ever drink while writing. Never have from the start, and I'm happy that I never have to. A lot of my stuff is plot-driven and mathematical, and I think you need a clean and sober mind to pin down the logistics of that.

When a locked-room mystery doesn't work, the solution makes you groan, and the book gets hurled across the room.

I'm just an entertainer. In a way crime stories are boring. A crime's been committed and at the end you know it will be solved. So you've got to make the story interesting besides it just being a plot. And that's why character matters, why you've got to make the characters interesting.

I always have a basic plot outline, but I like to leave some things to be decided while I write.

I love 'Curb Your Enthusiasm' and 'Extras' and also 'The Trip.' That had all the nuances of friendship and finding things out about their lives without it being too much plot-driven.

Each of us is a story, waiting for a devoted reader who will take us off the shelf and embrace all our plot twists.