Quotes About Plot

The principles are exactly the same as those of QED: everything is built out of propagators, vertex diagrams, and coupling constants. But there are new actors and whole new plot lines, including one called QCD.

The Deeper Magic always seemed to come up when Ember didn't feel like doing something, or needed to close a plot hole.

I'm more interested in plot than theme, but I hope my values find their way into my stories: kindness, sympathy, effort, and humor!

My books are primarily plot driven but the best plot in the world is useless if you don't populate them with characters that readers can care about.

Proust, my big inspiration for 'Goon Squad,' uses music a lot in his novel, both in terms of plot and structure. I liked the idea of doing the same thing, which is one reason I structured 'Goon Squad' as a record album, with an A side and a B side, that's built around the contrasting sounds of the individual numbers in it.

Literary novelists who have a strong handle on plot are often characterized as good vacation reads because they manage to transport you elsewhere, away from the petty facts of ordinary life.

I want my stories to be understood and enjoyed by anyone, so I need 'beta-readers' who will tell me when the plot is working or not working, and when my writing is concise or vague.

I'm certainly a plot and character man. Themes, structure, style - they're valid components of a novel and you can't complete the book without them. But I think what propels me as a reader is plot and character.

Why do the nations rage, and the people plot a vain thing? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the Lord and against His Anointed. . . .

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary, O'er a plan to venge myself upon that cursed Thursday Next- This Eyre affair, so surprising, gives my soul such loath despising, Here I plot my temper rising, rising from my jail of text. "Get me out!" I said, advising, "Pluck me from this jail of text- or I swear I'll wring your neck!

Mr Cripp's last words were 'Good heavens! It's full of holes!' said Mary. 'Do you have any idea to what he was referring?' 'Most puzzling,' confessed the Vicar. 'He might have been referring to anything - the greenhouse, his cucumber, the plot - anything.' 'The plot?' echoed Mary. 'I mean the vegetable plot,' he said hurriedly.

He shook his head, looked around carefully and then lowered his voice. "Pretend to be mad and talk a lot. Then—and this is the important bit—do nothing at all until you absolutely have to and then make sure everyone dies." "Thanks

Emperor," I said, "if a character has run its course, then it's run its course. What do you want me to do? Go and talk the author out of it?" "Would you?" replied Zhark, opening his eyes wide. "Would you really do that?" "No. You can't have characters trying to tell their authors what to write in their books. Besides, within your books you are truly evil and need to be punished.

The four opposing forces in any novel are atmosphere, plot, character and pace. But they don't have to be in equilibrium. You can have a book without any plot or pace at all, but it has to make up for it in character and a bit of atmosphere—like The Old Man and the Sea. Most thrillers are plot and pace and nothing else, such as Where Eagles Dare. But it doesn't matter; each to a reader's own—

What happened is the least of it. It's a novel, and once you've finished a novel, what happened in it is of little importance and soon forgotten. What matters are the possibilities and ideas that the novel's imaginary plot communicates to us and infuses us with, a plot that we recall far more vividly than real events and to which we pay far more attention.

The best laid plot can injure its maker, and often a man's perfidy will rebound on himself.

People don't realize you can't copyright a plot," Alessandro said finally. "You can't even copyright a title, and that would be a lot easier to make an argument about.

The] reader is not primarily interested in plot. He is interested in what happens because he is interested in the character it happens to. No incident has any place in the story unless it has an emotional impact on the character--and on the reader. Newbery Acceptance Speech

So darned easy to plot that - and always at the last moment - one is afraid. Or cheats oneself with hope.

Unless what?" I ask. "Unless, it's all a plot, Sallie," Mattie says. "Unless it's all been a plot from the beginning. Seymour arranges for the Duke to meet a woman he had a history with. Once the Duke marries her, Seymour just happens to show up and three days later goads the Duke into doing something stupid that gets him killed, then before the Duke's body is cold Seymour marries his widow to get his hands on Eddie's inheritance.

When you're a story teller, you work out everything. You work out who these people are, what's going to be happening. The environment in which they live.

I have the "thing" worked out - the trick or the surprise or the pivotal fact. Then I just start somewhere and let the story work itself out.

So I work hard to present the human side of my characters while not neglecting the plot.

Usually when you start the characters, the first thing is the script. Your design work is about telling the story. It's later that casting comes into play, but it's a huge component.