Quotes About Storytelling

Writing music is just like writing a book.

It's writing songs within the structure of telling a story, so it becomes a platform for diverse songwriting, for a writing process that's broader than just figuring out a song. You're also dealing with always pushing the story forward, with casting the voices, with the orchestration, with the arrangements.

Each song is a small universe to me. Each song has a story of its own. Each has a full life to express in order to be complete, so it often happens that the building to a big crescendo feels right in the recording or writing process.

Of course, when you're making a documentary, you don't have actors, but nonetheless, there is a writing process that does take place in the editing room.

My writing process often begins with a question. I write down ideas and let them stew for about a year. Then, when I sit down to write, I make a list of characters and try to see how they fit.

My lyrics are more country - what I love is the storytelling and the structure, how tight the rhymes can be. But pop melodies have always been intrinsically linked to my writing style.

I've always had an ear for melodies, and they veer pop. My lyrics are more country - what I love is the storytelling and the structure, how tight the rhymes can be. But pop melodies have always been intrinsically linked to my writing style.

Write your story as it needs to be written. Write it honestly, and tell it as best you can. I'm not sure that there are any other rules. Not ones that matter.

Science fiction is no more written for scientists that ghost stories are written for ghosts.

I am always in self-doubt... every moment of my filmmaking. I am supremely confident when the story is being written and everything is in our head. But the moment we get into the filmmaking, I start doubting myself - from the camera angle to the re-recording to getting the actors to do their shots.

A modern-day Dickens with a popular voice and a genius for storytelling in any genre, Stephen King has written many wonderful books.

I have written with some amazing singers and songwriters - the moment with Snoop Dogg was amazing - but being able to tell an Aboriginal story is bigger than anything that I have ever known.

Nobody has ever written as many enjoyable, fun-to-read crime novels as Agatha Christie. It's all about the storytelling and the pleasure of the reader. She doesn't want to be deep or highbrow.

Folklore used to be passed by word of mouth, from one generation to the next; that's what makes it folklore, as opposed to, say, history, which is written down and stored in an archive.

Theater, at the end of the day, is about ideas. It's about very large ideas. And if the play is beautifully written or smartly written and has incredible characters you follow on the journey, you take home these larger ideas. Whether it's 'Angels in America' or 'Lucky Guy' or 'Normal Heart,' you follow this moment-to-moment journey as an audience.

'Watchmen' is not only the greatest comic ever written, it's a really important work of fiction.

First and foremost, telling historical stories is very tricky because it is something that is known. It is not like you can tell a lie or change something that is written in black and white.

I was worried that one day, 40 years from now, I would look back and wouldn't be able to remember the details of my life, so I've written them all down.

I've wondered if 'Harry Potter' would have been as big if it was 'Harriet Potter.' Now that I've written a screenplay - and raising a son in particular - I'm looking at story content and realizing how limited women are onscreen.

The unfolding of a story is both as exciting and as difficult for each and every novel I've written, regardless of time and place.

I make up stories in my head all the time, but I've never written them down. But I write a lot of story songs. Any song I'm singing, I sort of see it like a movie in my head. That's why a lot of times I close my eyes when I'm singing.

The picture alone, without the written word, leaves half the story untold.

When television gets in trouble is when it forgets that it all begins with the written word.

There were moments in 'Malala,' I felt very moved by the storytelling, and 'pleased' would be the wrong word, but the music could be part of what moved me: that I was trying to contribute to something that was meaningful outside the realm of creative work but just more in terms of the world.