Quotes About Storytelling

It seems to me the big weakness in most films is the writing. You can learn directing, but you can't learn writing.

I'm not trying to act like I'm Superman or better than anybody else in the game. I'm just telling my story, showing my strengths and weaknesses - as a human, as a person, as a man.

Working with other artists and writers over the past couple years has really given me a clear idea of my strengths and weaknesses and what is unique about me as an artist. I figured it's my storytelling lyrics, falsetto range and tone of voice, so I write songs to utilize those.

There's a wealth of literature out there which, hopefully, will be, you know, exploded in the future, and I personally find it very rewarding to be involved with classic storytelling, and sort of legendary characters.

Anxiety is your creativity turned into a weapon that you use to beat yourself up. And this is because anxiety is mostly storytelling - repeating poisonous stories that you've inherited from others. It feeds on your fear.

I like for jewelry to tell a story and to be able to talk about what I'm wearing. That's more important to me than a name, brand, or label.

I think, unfortunately, everything is becoming about comfort, you know? A comfortable way to tell a story. The comfortable way, so that the audience will never be lost. A comfortable way to produce a film with green screens or without a lot of physical effort or losing control because of the weather or physical locations.

In bad weather, I spent hours drawing action figures on paper, coloring them, backing them on cardboard, then cutting them out and creating whole stories around their lives.

If you do weave one-liners into a story, you have to have an overall story as well, otherwise it doesn't really count as narrative.

When you make a movie, you do it so piecemeal. You're doing it, not only scene by scene, out of order, but shot by shot, line by line. And there's this idea that the director has the whole thing in his or her head and they're going to somehow weave it all together in the end.

When you tell a story, there are imperatives of structure, of style, of pacing and all of this, that are there simply because you want to make it a good story. When do you introduce your characters? When do you put them onstage, when do you take them off the stage? How do you weave the different threads of the narrative together?

I look for two things when I am about to launch into a book. First, there has to be a dramatic arc to the story itself that will carry me, and the reader, from beginning to end. Second, the story has to weave through larger themes that can illuminate the world of the subject.

Jazz is such a living art form. It happens right in the moment. You weave a story by changing certain elements and components.

I have to challenge myself, and I have to challenge the reader. We should be weaving and working on new stories and not the same story over and over.

Writing historical novels can be dangerous. We need to be as accurate and as fair about the historical record as we can be, at the same time as creating our fictional characters and, hopefully, telling a good story. The challenge is weaving the fiction into the history.

Web series is a new format, where everything, from the writing to storytelling is different. As an actor you have to approach it differently because you have a character which can go on for a long time. It is my duty to be on my toes, understand the new technology and adapt.

I think if you make good, interesting content with compelling story lines and good characters, people will tune into the web for as long as you want them to.

I used to do improv in New York, and it was sort of embarrassing to tell people that I was the Web video girl and having to explain that was a viable form of entertainment.

Web is going to become very big... The format is different in terms of its storytelling pattern and its duration. Web audience enjoys watching stuff on the go, they prefer to watch it alone. It is isolated viewing while cinema is collective viewing.

I think TV content has changed a lot and even films, especially after the web platform has come in. Now, there's an option for everyone, you'll find content that appeals to you. So, I really like how storytelling is changing.

I originally wrote 'The Martian' as a free serial novel, posting one chapter at a time to my website.

I would like to use stories as a springboard for children to make their own creative responses. I would like to encourage them to express themselves using music, art, film or whatever, and upload it to a website having been inspired by particular stories.

Neil Gaiman is a star. He constructs stories like some demented cook might make a wedding cake, building layer upon layer, including all kinds of sweet and sour in the mix.

As a child, as a cinemagoer, I think there is nothing better than being in a cinema or watching a film. I think it's just a while magical... it almost feels like you're at a big party in India, where you're singing, you're dancing, you're laughing, you're crying, you feel like you're at a wedding because our films invariably cover all emotions.