Quotes About Storytelling

The older I get, the more I seek to use a plain prose style, concentrating more on story.

You don't need to like your protagonists.

In fact, some reviewers have said that as they got into the story they forgot that the protagonist is a black woman. They were moved by the story - by the people as a whole - and not by the little things.

People seem to need a likable protagonist more than ever.

It may sound very strange, but I love the freedom that writing a novel gives me. It is an unhindered experience. If I come after a bad day, I can decide that my protagonist will die on page 100 of my novel in a 350-page story.

In most shows, there's usually a hero or a protagonist, and even if there are multiple heroes or protagonists, most shows try and make it so you really always know who's the good guy and who's the bad guy.

Out of 10 projects I get sent, seven or eight are female protagonists, and that's not the only thing I'm interested in.

Women need to tell their stories from their experiences, and that may not mean that it would be all stories with women as protagonists.

There's something about film that offers this opportunity to stick to a very, very clear single protagonist's point of view, and I like that.

I often meet directors who want to cast me as the protagonist, but if the rest of the characters are not strong enough, the film is bound to fall flat on a creative level.

In a movie, you're just passive; you're just watching a story that is told to you. But in games, I saw that you could be the main protagonist: you could be in the shoes of the hero and make the decisions.

It's basically taking a 911 call, bringing them on stage and dealing with it just like when I was a Chicago policeman for 12 years. I personally become involved. Where Jerry lets people tell their story and lets everything happen on stage, I kind of go after the bad guy and protect the little guy.

Audiences want great story telling; it's why white people watch my show 'Black in America.' It's why black people watch 'Latina in America.' All of that is statistically shown and proven but it was because it was good story telling about people who were outsiders.

It just proves good movies don't need 100 million dollars to be good.

Character is always my driving force. And to tell a good story and to provide an entertaining read.

Draw your chair up close to the edge of the precipice and I'll tell you a story.

Lie to me by the moonlight. Do a fabulous story.

Go on, she urged. Lie to me by the moonlight. Do a fabulous story.

I married the heroine of my stories.

Writing fiction (that means I make up stuff) is like having a free GO PAST GO card. You can write pretty much whatever you want, burn down a building, maim or kill a character, you can create love, hate, payback. You can create fictional places that over time actually become real to you the writer, and also to the reader. For example, Pinewood, where the vigilantes hang out, is a fictional farm in McLean, Virginia.

To narrate is to create, whilst to live is merely to be lived.

We're stories telling stories, (…)

I mean to say, whether a yarn is tall or small I like to hear it well told. I like to meet a man that can take in hand to tell a story and not make a balls of it while he's at it. I like to know where I am, do you know. Everything has a beginning and an end.

Anyone who survived childhood has enough material to write for the rest of his life.