Quotes About Storytelling

Fiction is a lie. And GOOD fiction is the truth inside the lie.

Kids, fiction is the truth inside the lie, and the truth of this fiction is simple enough: the magic exists. S.K.

You know, King said, I'm not much good at telling stories. That sounds like a paradox, but it's not; it's the reason I write them down.

The object of fiction isn't grammatical correctness but to make the reader welcome and then tell a story.... Writing is seduction. Good talk is part of seduction.

I think telling stories is like pushing something. Pushing against uncreation itself, maybe.

he was after all, a novelist...and a novelist was simply a fellow who got paid to tell lies. The bigger the lies, the better the pay.

What you need to remember is that there's a difference between lecturing about what you know and using it to enrich the story. The latter is good. The former is not.

Writing controlled fiction is called "plotting." Buckling your seatbelt and letting the story take over, however…that is called "storytelling." Storytelling is as natural as breathing; plotting is the literary version of artificial respiration.

Language does not always have to wear a tie and lace-up shoes. The object of fiction isn't grammatical correctness but to make the reader welcome and then tell a story  . . . . to make him/her forget, whenever possible, that he/she is reading a story at all.

But storytelling always changes time. At least it does in my world.

Try to write your own story. Consider writing about yourself, or rewriting something in your life you wished had gone differently. Then, be brave and share with someone what you've written. How did this process feel for you?

We all write fiction when we write about the past.

Bad writing is more than a matter of shit syntax and faulty observation; bad writing usually arises from a stubborn refusal to tell stories about what people actually do—to face the fact, let us say, that murderers sometimes help old ladies cross the street.

Did you know that could happen? Did you know you could sit in front of the screen or a pad of paper and change the world? It doesn't last, the world always comes back, but before it does, it's awesome. It's everything, because you can have things the way you want. And I want you to still be alive. In the story you are, and always will be.

For me, that emotional payoff is what it's all about. I want you to laugh or cry when you read a story...or do both at the same time. I want your heart, in other words. If you want to learn something, go to school.

I know you," she said. "You're Stephen King. You write those scary stories. That's all right, some people like them, but not me. I like uplifting stories, like that Shawshank Redemption." "I wrote that too," I said. "No you didn't," she said, and went on her way. The

Even after a thousand pages we don't want to leave the world the writer has made for us, or the make-believe people who live there.

Ladies and gentlemen, attention, please! Come in close where everyone can see! I got a tale to tell, it isn't gonna cost a dime! (And if you believe that, we're gonna get along just fine.)

I never think of stories as made things; I think of them as found things. As if you pull them out of the ground, and you just pick them up. Someone once told me that that was me low-balling my own creativity. That might or might not be the case. But still, on the story I am working on now, I do have some unresolved problem. It doesn't keep me awake at nights. I feel like when it comes down, it will be there...

The most important things to remember about backstory are that (a) everyone has a history and (b) most of it isn't very interesting. Stick to the parts that are, and don't get carried away with the rest. Life stories are best received in bars, and only then an hour or so before closing time, and if you are buying.

I have never felt like I was creating anything. For me, writing is like walking through a desert and all at once, poking up through the hardpan, I see the top of a chimney. I know there's a house under there, and I'm pretty sure that I can dig it up if I want. That's how I feel. It's like the stories are already there. What they pay me for is the leap of faith that says: If I sit down and do this, everything will come out OK.

la buena literatura podía ser embriagadora sin renunciar al hilo conductor de las ideas.

The audience burst into applause and hallelujahs. I kept trying to make sense of it, and kept coming up short. Here were people who routinely used their computers to stay in touch with their friends and get the news of the day, people who took weather satellites and lung transplants for granted, people who expected to live lives thirty and forty years longer than those of their great-grandparents. Here they were, falling for a story that made Santa and the Tooth Fairy look like gritty realism.

Of course, the writer can impose control; It's just a really shitty idea. Writing controlled fiction is called plotting. Buckling your seatbelt and letting the story take over, however... that is called storytelling. Storytelling is as natural as breathing; plotting is the literary version of artificial respiration.