Quotes About Plot

I write largely plot-driven stories.

What always leads me in terms of my movies are characters.

What is the point of doing a long length character if that does not make sense or create an impact on story?

You have to follow the logic of your characters while you're writing.

Whatever story you're telling in Louisiana, the landscape is going to become a character in it.

I do not care about the length of my role. But it should make a difference to the story.

As an actor, you always want to feel like what you're doing is making a difference to the story.

When I say narrative, I do not mean simply the plot, I mean considerably more. Plots and their shapes--the bare outlines of stories--were something I know J.R.R. Tolkien himself was interested in. When I was an undergraduate, I went to a course of lectures he gave on the subject--at least, I think that was the subject, because Tolkien was all but inaudible. He evidently hated lecturing, and I suspect he also hated giving his thoughts away.

Miss Lea, it doesn't do to get attached to these secondary characters. It's not their story.

All plots tend to move deathward. This is the nature of plots. Political plots, terrorist plots, lovers' plots, narrative plots, plots that are part of children's games. We edge nearer death every time we plot. It is like a contract that all must sign, the plotters as well as those who are the targets of the plot.

There is enough mystery in the facts as we know them, enough of conspiracy, coincidence, loose ends, dead ends, multiple interpretations. There is no need […] to invent the grand and masterful scheme, the plot that reaches flawlessly in a dozen directions.

Plot a murder, you're saying. But every plot is a murder in effect. To plot is to die, whether we know it or not. [...] To plot, to take aim at something, to shape time and space. This is how we advance the art of human consciousness. (WN 291-2)

Le trame possiedono una logica. C'è una tendenza, nelle trame, a evolvere in direzione della morte.

All plots tend to move deathward. This is the nature of plots. Political plots, terrorist plots, lovers' plots, narrative plots, plots that are part of children's games. We edge nearer to death every time we plot. It is like a contract that all must sign, the plotters as well as those who are the targets of the plot.

Longing is different than need. Needing to solve plot problems can kick protagonists into action, but that's not the same thing as forging a human bond. What does that is inner yearning.

A general rule in creating stories is that characters don't want to change. They must be forced to change.

in a story, there are three levels of problems that work together to capture a reader's or a moviegoer's imagination.

A story is a character who wants something and overcomes conflict to get it

Good stories don't happen by accident, I learned. They are planned.

Suffering, as absurd as it seemed, pointed to a greater story in which, if one would only construe himself as a character within, he could find fulfillment in his tragic role, knowing the plot was heading toward redemption.

You can't go on without a story any longer than you can read a book about nothing.

anything that doesn't serve the plot has to go.

A logline is simply a movie's one-sentence description.

Before knowing what the hero wants, the audience has little interest in her fate.