Quotes About Storytelling

Writers like to believe they're in control of their material, but that's just a comforting lie. After more than twenty-five years of making my life as storyteller, it's become extremely -sometimes painfully- clear to me that I'm just a vehicle, a way for the story to get out into the world. But it's the story itself that does the telling.

Her little shoulders drove me mad; I hugged her and hugged her. And she loved it. 'I love love,' she said, closing her eyes. I promised her beautiful love. I gloated over her. Our stories were told; we subsided into silence and sweet anticipatory thoughts. It was as simple as that. You could have all your Peaches and Bettys and Marylous and Ritas and Camilles and Inezes in this world; this was my girl and my kind of girlsoul, and I told her that.

This was really the way my whole road experience began, and the things that were to come are too fantastic not to tell.

That looks like a tree, let's call it a tree,' said Coyote to Earthmaker at the beginning, and they walked around the rootdrinker patting their bellies.

I'll write long sad tales about people in the legend of my life - This part is my part of the movie, let's hear yours.

history becomes fiction in the…act of being written down

We've got a long way to go," preambled Dean, "and so you must take every indulgence and deal with every single detail you can bring to mind—and still it won't all be told. Part 4 Chapter 4

In 1995, I founded a storytelling program for children called Neighborhood Bridges in collaboration with the Children's Theatre Company of Minneapolis, which is 15 elementary schools in the Twin Cities.

Tom Hooper had done 'John Adams,' and David Lynch did 'Twin Peaks.' I figured I could do eight hours of television, and I wanted to.

I've always said that 'Twin Peaks,' to me, was like a novel we filmed every page of.

I don't write from dreams because I don't remember mine, but I had a fragment of an image left about twins, whose father was telling them how their lives were going to go for the next eight years. I wrote a scene about that, and then another and then another and then another, and after five months I had 732 pages.

In the 'Buffy' room, it was never about a plot twist, ever. It was always about, 'Tell the story, tell the characters, complicate their lives, make things get worse,' but we never worked backwards from the plot, and it was always a great lesson.

I believe in fairy tales. They are the basis of all our performance of storytelling and film-making - when we twist the real events of the world into something that offers us hope - and I believe in that.

Most important to any fake story is a plausible, realistic edge with a satirical twist that is topical.

It's become very popular in contemporary films to have the twist ending.

For me, the worst writing generally just 'flips' things: this person's really a traitor; it was all a dream; etc. Nothing is so ruinous as a forced 'twist,' I think.

I would never, for the sake of the story or a twist, have a character do something that they just wouldn't do. I really couldn't. I'd rather miss out on the twist.

All the dramas I admire most - 'Six Feet Under,' 'The Sopranos' - even when the scenes aren't laugh-out-loud funny, per se, there's a comic twist that gives the stories an energy.

I've never done a film before where every single person in the audience knows the ending. I mean suspense, twists are almost impossible these days. People are blogging your endings from their cinema seats.

Before I start, I trick myself into thinking I know what's going to happen in the story, but the characters have ideas of their own, and I always go with the character's choices. Most of the time I discover plot twists and directions that are better than what I originally had planned.

I know a lot of actors who have said to me, 'who'd have thought you could put a two-shot on screen for twenty minutes and people would be absolutely locked in, how does that work?' Well it does work, when the story is great and you've got these fabulous twists and turns - so those are my favorite bits!

I can tell you that as a writer and as a reader, I regard character as king. Or queen. No matter how riveting the action or interesting the plot twists, if I don't feel like I'm meeting someone who feels real, I'm not going to be compelled to read further.

Normally, in a film with lots of twists and turns, half of them don't make sense; they're just there for their own sakes.

I've always said I'm less interested in twists as I am about escalation.