Quotes About Narrative

Look, there's no question that we have a challenge with gun violence. But there's a lot more nuanced parts of that narrative, and that's the part that I think that we have to make sure that we emphasize along with all the great things that are going on in Chicago, particularly in our neighborhoods.

Well, there's no question that a good script is an absolutely essential, maybe the essential thing for a movie.

The thing I don't like on television is when somebody does something that makes absolutely no sense just for the shock of it.

I'd rather have two minutes of screen time and have purpose than have 20 minutes of screen time in a separate track that makes no sense to the story.

Music is so important. Because in Chicago it's up to us to tell the stories nobody else will.

When I mention that I'm a game designer as well as a writer, someone will nod and say, 'Ah, that's what we like about your script. The videogame feel.'

To the biographer all lives bar none are dramatic constructions.

Nonfiction is both easier and harder to write than fiction. It's easier because the facts are already laid out before you, and there is already a narrative arc. What makes it harder is that you are not free to use your imagination and creativity to fill in any missing gaps within the story.

There is no longer any such thing as fiction or nonfiction; there's only narrative.

When you deal with nonfiction you deal with human characters.

I write both fiction and nonfiction. I begin my fiction with the main character. The story comes later.

I don't do nonfiction anymore. Eventually, you just feel constrained by the facts. You want to go where the words take you, and people's actual lives don't always conform. And you can't know them that well.

I do think that narrative, long-form nonfiction is the perfect form because it's rooted in something very real, but we're also, you know, completely spiritual, emotional creatures driven by all sorts of desires and needs.

The thing I always tell my writing students - I'm not a full-time instructor, by any means, but periodically I've taught writing students - what I always tell them is that the most important thing in narrative nonfiction is that you not only have to have all the research; you have to have about 100% more than you need.

When folks say 'identity politics' don't matter, it simply reinforces the norm of a white, middle-class, cis narrative and further marginalizes the rest of us who don't share that identity.

'13 Reasons Why' includes LGBTQ people and people of color in stories without making it about that. They're just living, breathing, human beings who happen to be different from the white, cis, straight norm.

I'm a small and normal girl, and stories like mine no one likes to tell. Fortunately so, because I wouldn't like to play myself.

What we normally define as history doesn't interest me. It's a constraint.

It's my mission in life to put people on the screen who don't get normally represented.

Normally, you spend the play convincing people of the world and the characters.

From the very beginning, history wasn't content simply to be nostalgic fairytales; it wanted to make you think.

I'm not interested in breaking news. I'm interested in telling the story of what's going on and then trying to figure it out.

I don't do storyboarding, ever; I'm not interested in that.

Scripts that make characters a two-sentence description, I'm not interested in.