Quotes About Story

I wrote my first real murder story as a journalist for the Daytona Beach News Journal in 1980. It was about a body found in the woods. Later, the murder was linked to a serial killer who was later caught and executed for his crimes.

I don't remember how I picked up 'Different Seasons,' but it was a book I read on a grave shift. I was absolutely floored by it; 'The Body,' a story about kids who go searching for a corpse in the woods, impacted me especially.

If you take away scale, the nature of the story changes. I made a joke the other day: if I were to try to make 'Glory' now, rather than be about a regiment, it would be about a platoon. It would be seven men in the woods rather than all the men on the beach.

New York in a way functions as another character within the story, as it does within most of Woody Allen's stories.

I'm sick of hearing, thinking and talking about Woody Allen. Nonetheless, the allegations against him continue to capture our national attention because so much of the story is strange and sordid.

I love doing comedy, and that's the thing I will always go back to, really, but I'd love to have the freedom to do sort of 'meaty' roles but also have the freedom to do the sort of films I want to make, like what Woody Allen does. You forget he's funny because you're so gripped by the story, but they still make you laugh.

The script of 'Shogun' was so tight that you could not take a word out of a sentence, you could not take a sentence out of a scene, and you certainly couldn't take out a scene without putting ripples right through the back or the front of the overall story.

Because God gave you your makeup and superintended every moment of your past, including all the hardship, pain, and struggles, He wants to use your words in a unique manner. No one else can speak through your vocal cords, and, equally important, no one else has your story.

When you reach the editing stage, it is often the case that you can get too involved with the story to detect errors. You can see words in your head that aren't actually there on the page, sentences blur together and errors escape you, and you follow plot threads and see only the images in your skull.

I hope the story of 2011 is that America gets its mojo back. You've got to remember that America has the best universities; it's got some of the best businesses. It's got an unbelievable work ethic, rule of law. The story of 2011 will be America blossoming again.

Let's be clear - for people like me, who are obsessed with story and for whom words are their medium, writing is the best job possible. I work hard, but I earn more than the national average wage while I play with my imagination, and for me, that's a dream.

We did have a script, but it didn't consist of the routines and gags. It outlined the basic story idea and just a plan for us to follow. But when it came to each scene, we and the gagmen would work out ideas.

People often talk about parachute journalism, but one of the skills that you get when you are a correspondent is the ability to look at facts fast and work out what the story is.

I understand why creative people like dark, but American audiences don't like dark. They like story. They do not respond to nervous breakdowns and unhappy episodes that lead nowhere. They like their characters to be a part of the action. They like strength, not weakness, a chance to work out any dilemma.

I become my characters, and then try to allow events in the story to take their own course. I try not to play God, but to let them work out their own destiny.

In general, when I'm writing, I concentrate on the story itself, and I leave it to other people, such as agents and publishers, to work out who it's for.

Sometimes people say that a picture is worth a thousand words, so if you look at my tattoos and you know what you're reading, you can draw a lot from them.

In some respects, big ideas can be a bit too big for a short story - especially if you've only got a couple of thousand words to play with, and you need room for other stuff, like character, description.

My story is the story of thousands of children from around the world. I hope it inspires others to stand up for their rights.

There is a story which is not being told strongly enough of the Afghan employees of the UN inside the country who are saving hundreds of thousands of lives everyday by their bravery and nobody talks of them.

For me, inspiration isn't a sort of spark which lights the fire of the story. It's more like a thread, one of many, which you can tease out of a story once it's written, if you feel so inclined.

Romantic fiction, in the broader sense, can be any novel that has a love story somewhere in it. It can be a mystery or a historical novel, as long as it has this very strong romantic thread running through it.

Normally my films have a single thread of an emotion, an insight or one single belief, and then I turn the entire story and build it around that.

It's funny - I was a big fan of 'The Sopranos.' It became kind of a threat to 'The X-Files' in a way because they could play with language, character, and story in ways that we never could because of the limitations of network television.