Quotes About Storytelling

When I'm writing, what I pretend subconsciously is that we're cavemen, we're sitting around the fire, and I'm telling you stories. If I bore you, you're probably going to pick up a big club and hit me over the head.

Above all, I craved to seize the whole essence, in the confines of one single photograph, of some situation that was in the process of unrolling itself before my eyes.

You have more creative freedom with writing, in certain ways, because you can create everything that happens. But, as an actor you also have creative freedom because you don't so much focus on what has to move the story along, and only on how your character is reacting to situations.

I'm interested in directing movies about situations that I've lived, so they are almost a personal essay about what I've come to believe in.

In novelas, sometimes you get the most ridiculous situations, but you make the best of it. But novelas are a very special genre.

That's what made me fall in love with music in the first place was the idea of being able to take listeners on a journey across forty or sixty minutes.

Whatever story you want to tell, tell it at the right size.

What I truly get excited about is not the genre of a movie or the size of a part - it's character. I like to find characters.

I like character-driven stuff. It doesn't matter, the size of the part.

If I'm in the bookstore, and I see a 700-page novel, my first thought is, 'Ooh, how could you cut this down to size and make a movie out of it?'

The sizes and shapes of the panels have never been important to my stories. It has always been the words and images that drew me in, kind of like watching a movie.

It just comes kind of naturally to me to take something and try and make it relatable and interesting to someone who doesn't know everything about skating.

When I first began to have the initial idea for 'Heartsease,' I just wrote a skeleton story; that is, I started her off as this young, bright 16-year-old and then added the events that occurred and where she and other characters fitted in, even writing 3 different endings, as I was not sure where Mary's story would lead to.

I write scripts to serve as skeletons awaiting the flesh and sinew of images.

When I'm writing, I'm creating the story and its character with words. I'm thinking about what the pictures will be like, but I never begin to sketch. The pictures are all in my head.

The whole thing with the Rick James story sketch and the Prince story sketch - I recounted my past, you know? - and that's what I was doing. It's not like I sat down and said I want to come up with a great story about Rick James. That stuff really happened.

If you do a sketch, that's a very short narrative. Stand-up, it's bit-to-bit, minute-long narratives.

A sketch is just a mini movie.

When I teach sketch writing, there's still a beginning, middle and end.

I just wanted to paint and sketch and tell stories by drawing.

My preference is for people who can do sketch comedy or situational comedy, where it's not a joke, but it's telling a story.

I think what is nice about 'Elf,' and why it doesn't play as one long sketch, is that the character actually grows up during the course of the film. It's not just a character that you can keep checking in on and keep doing sketches about. It's a story. I'm pretty proud of how we told it.

I love telling stories. I love the intimacy between the writer and reader. When you write sketches it's over in two minutes. When you write a book the characters have to have a bit of emotional depth.

If you tell your own story to your children - that includes your positive moments and your negative moments, and how you overcame them - you give your children the skills and the confidence they need to feel like they can overcome some hardship that they've felt.