Quotes About Storytelling

You are the storyteller of your own life, and you can create your own legend, or not.

We lay out our lives in a narrative we understand, like a movie, but are you enjoying making it or are you wondering who's watching my movie.

In life, finding a voice is speaking and living the truth. Each of you is an original. Each of you has a distinctive voice. When you find it, your story will be told. You will be heard.

Think about how backstory fits the tale you're trying to tell... p.195

While there may not be a book in every one of us, there is so often a damned good short story.

Write non-fiction like fiction, so the reader is constantly turning the page to find out what happens next, and write fiction like non-fiction, so that when your character walks out of the donut shop and turns left into the nunnery, there really is a nunnery next door and not a muffler shop.

Anna Chapter Eight: Elsa Chapter Nine: Elsa Chapter Ten: Hans Chapter Eleven: Anna Chapter Twelve: Elsa Chapter Thirteen: Elsa Chapter Fourteen: Elsa Chapter Fifteen: Anna Chapter Sixteen: Elsa Chapter Seventeen: Anna Chapter Eighteen: Elsa

Captions and hashtags didn't tell the whole story. They didn't even tell the real story a lot of the time.

Everything has its cycle. I think its appropriate for us to be ending now. But the beauty of storytelling, and the beauty of film and television is that it continues on.

Writers are damned liars. Every single one of them.

I could almost hear the characters inside, murmuring and jostling, impatient for me to open the cover and let them out.

History is fiction.

We lie. That's what we do. You're selling me a line of bullshit and you want me to sell you a line of bullshit back so you can write a major line of bullshit and be paid for it.

It had been years since she'd fabricated a story from whole cloth. It brought a sense of returning to an earlier time when she was questioned more often and had fewer evasions at her disposal. Besides, she thought, looking into Rose's relieved and joyful face, people practically told you the lies they wanted to hear.

His eyes weren't closed like they used to be when he'd make Danny tell about an ice castle on Pluto where a band of pirates lived. But wanting to be told a story, entertained, however that looks on a person's face--Danny saw this now and remembered it. It filled him with relief.

But my problem is the same one had by everyone who gathers information. What to do with it? How to sort and shape and use it? How to keep from drowning in it? Not every story needs to be told.

Sasha tipped back her head to look at him. She made a point of doing this now and then, just to remind Coz that she wasn't an idiot—she knew the question had a right answer. She and Coz were collaborators, writing a story whose end had already been determined: she would get well.

I have great respect for writers who are humble, whose language allows the reader to see the story but doesn't get in the way. Language is a window, and if the window is clean, you shouldn't be aware you're looking through glass.

Why do I have to tell a story?" I asked. "Because if you don't tell the story, someone else will tell it for you.

Why do I have to tell a story?" I asked. "Because if you don't tell the story, someone else will tell it for you." ? The Inheritance Games

She closed her eyes. Said the four most comforting words she knew: "Once upon a time." An incantation.

Like all stories, it has pieces which are true, and pieces which are fiction. Nothing is ever really what it seems. Remember

And as Rhonda told the story, she thought: this is how the past gets passed down. This is how memories are made. Half-invented, embellished, given a touch of whimsy. Daniel would be a saint now that he was dead. A beautiful man who made his child wings.

May 13 Deduction. Reduction. Redaction. How much has been redacted from the carefully curated version of our story?