A Quote by Chris Offutt

The secret is to start a story near the ending.

Chris Offutt

Quote Topics

Ending Near Secret Start Story

Quote Author

Chris Offutt
American - Writer
Born: August 24, 1958

Do not start a story unless you have an ending in mind. You can change the story's ending if you wish, but you should always have a destination.

Gene Wolfe

Tell me a story, Pew. What kind of story, child? A story with a happy ending. There’s no such thing in all the world. As a happy ending? As an ending.

Jeanette Winterson

When the ending finally comes to me, I often have to backtrack and make the beginning point towards that ending. Other times, I know exactly what the ending will be before I begin, like with the story "A Brief Encounter With the Enemy." It was all about the ending - that's what motivated me.

Said Sayrafiezadeh

In life, every ending is just the start of another story.

Julian Barnes

Every Great Story deserves a Great Ending and 'The Dark Knight Rises' is our Attempt to give that GREAT story, a GREAT ENDING.

Christopher Nolan

It's a tough job to tell a story when the audience already knows the ending, and the ending is bleak.

Walter Jon Williams

- the only difference between a happy ending and a sad ending is where you decide the story ends.

Andrew Kaufman

I would like to believe this is a story I’m telling. I need to believe it. I must believe it. Those who can believe that such stories are only stories have a better chance. If it’s a story I’m telling, then I have control over the ending. Then there will be an ending, to the story, and real life will come after it. I can pick up where I left off.

Margaret Atwood

I've always admired the tradition of storytellers who sat in the public market and told their stories to gathered crowds. They'd start with a single premise and talk for hours - the notion of one story, ever-changing but never-ending.

Nicolas Roeg

Imbuing fiction with a life that extends beyond the last word is in some ways the goal: the ending that goes beyond the ending in the reader's mind, so invested are they in the story.

Jeff Vandermeer

What if Jesus' secret message reveals a secret plan?”. What if he didn't come to start a new religion-but rather came to start a political, social, religious, artistic, economic, intellectual, and spiritual revolution that would give birth to a new world?

Brian D. McLaren

I really like knowing secrets, and once I do know that secret, I can keep it. But if I'm on the outside and I don't know the secret, that's a different story. I will try with all my power to get the secret out of the person who knows.

Ryan Lee

I'm proud of everybody in our organization. Not every story has a happy ending. Doesn't mean it's a bad story.

David Blatt

I couldn't have articulated this process at the time; I just sort of did it instinctually. But now when I talk about this with my students all the time, it's one of the first things I address in memoir classes - that you have to put it all in because you're writing your way into the ending of your own story. Even if you think you know what the story is, you don't until you write it. If you start leaving things out you could leave out vital organs and not know it.