Quotes About Storytelling

I guess you can stay sort of true to the story; you don't have to artificially bring the character back from whatever doom you've designed for them, you can tell the story, I suppose, honestly.

When you're writing non-fiction, you go as far as you can go, and then ethically you have to stop. You can't go. You can't suppose. You can't imagine. And I think there's something in human nature that wants to finish the story.

I suppose I have an active imagination, and writing allows me to live it out.

It's hard to say how certain stories just punch us in the heart and the brain at the same time at the end. I suppose that's what we're all looking for. But each story has its own valence, its own way of saying goodbye to you.

There's been a huge history of cisgender success on the back of trans stories, which is something I'm deeply aware of. My take on it, I suppose, was that I do think actors should be able to play anything.

Myth is supposed to bring us together, but fantasy alienates us.

It's supposed to be entertainment. It's not supposed to be a documentary.

I will surely pen my autobiography.

Surely the job of fiction is to actually tell the truth. It's a paradox that's at the heart of any kind of storytelling.

My stuff always starts with interviews. I start interviewing people, and then slowly but surely, a movie insinuates itself.

The motive behind a Delhi Film Council is simple - with so many filmmakers coming to Delhi to shoot their films, casting Delhi's young lads in their movies and even keeping the city as the base of their story, they surely need more collaboration in future. When they'll have such a council in the city, they will be able to work better.

Director Aji John has a style of filmmaking that will surely appeal to all.

I believe in one thing, and that is content, because if your content is strong, the film will surely be hit at the box office.

Even 'Piku' was quite an experiment in terms of storytelling because on the surface nothing happens in the film. If you ask me what was the film about, it was about father-daughter fighting and the narrative captured their daily life.

Just as Renaissance artists provided narratives for the era they lived in, so do I. I'm always looking beyond the surface. I've done that ever since I first picked up a camera.

On the sequel, you've lost the element of surprise. Usually, on the first one you may not go very, very deep into character; the second one you start to explore the character a bit more.

I prefer to surprise myself as I'm writing. I'm not interested in it if I already know where it's going. So I have only the most general sense of what I'm doing when I start a story. I sometimes have a destination in mind, but how the story is going to go from Point A to Point Z is something I make up as I go along.

I usually start with an ending, then outline high points of things that happen, and kind of make up the rest as I go along. Occasionally, the characters surprise me, and I wonder how we got here. Other times, the characters are stubborn and won't do something I want them to in the story.

'Female Convict 701: Scorpion' is based on a manga as is 'Lady Snowblood.' I saw 'Lady Snowblood' in the theater between writing issue three and issue four of the first arc of 'Pretty Deadly,' and I was really surprised how much I was influenced by it.

I'm constantly surprised by human nature and humanity. And I think that's why I love what I do: because I love to story-tell and bring new characters to life.

The key is to constantly keep the audience surprised. If they feel like something is going to happen, or they think from an educational standpoint that something is about to happen because of all the moving parts, it is your job to break that expectation and show the audience something different.

We get excited by ideas, and we're more excited by being surprised by ideas than we are in dictating the course of events. We've found that leads to more interesting storytelling.

When the narrator says, 'This is a story without surprises,' most of the time, this is not what happens.

The idea behind a dish - the delight and the surprise - makes a difference. Great literature surprises and delights, and provokes us. It isn't just 'Here's the facts - boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl.' It's how you tell it.