A Quote by Denise Mina

I'm not much of a plotter. I start off with an inciting incident, and in classic crime fiction what happens is that all the action flows from that incident. It's very comfy when it all ties up and feels like a complete universe, but my stuff doesn't always work that way.

Denise Mina

Quote Topics

Action Always Classic Complete Crime Crime Fiction Feels Fiction Flows Happens Incident Like Much Off Start Stuff Ties Universe Up Very Way Work

Quote Author

Denise Mina
Scottish - Writer
Born: 1966

I must not fall asleep in the middle of my life. Out of the blankness that surrounds me I must pluck the incident after incident after incident whose little explosions keep me going.

J. M. Coetzee

No, you don't have to start your play with a premise. You can start with a character or an incident, or even a simple thought. This thought or incident grows, and the story slowly unfolds itself. You have time to find your premise in the mass of your material later. The important thing is to find it.

Lajos Egri

The inciting incident is how you get (characters) to do something. It's the doorway through which they can't return, you know. The story takes care of the rest.

Donald Miller

Plots may be simple or complex, but suspense, and climactic progress from one incident to another, are essential. Every incident in a fictional work should have some bearing on the climax or denouement, and any denouement which is not the inevitable result of the preceding incidents is awkward and unliterary.

H. P. Lovecraft

I believe every citizen feels the same way about the Sewol Ferry incident.

Park Bo-young

Blind Curve, the book I'm working on now, sprang from a crazy incident that happened to me last year while on my book tour. I was pulled out of my car for a minor traffic violation - an incident that escalated into my being thrown into cuffs and told I was going to jail. Except in my story, the hero doesn't get off as easily as I did.

Andrew Gross

Try and have neutral compassion toward the perpetrator. Step outside the sting of the incident and realize that this person is trying to erase their own inadequacy or unhappiness by transferring it to you. It won't make the incident go away, but it's one thing you can do to reduce the pain.

Monica Lewinsky

The great thing about fiction is that you can start off by telling the truth, then start making stuff up like crazy whenever you feel like it.

Megan McCafferty

It seems that, every several months, you have to expect there is going to be a terrorist incident or that there could be a terrorist incident somewhere. Right away, you're thinking, 'What are the consequences? Is this the first part of a larger attack? Is it coordinated, or a lone wolf?'

Peter T. King

I'm always interested in what classic crime writers got into when they stepped away from the genre stuff they were known for. That's why 'Mildred Pierce' is like noir without any real crime.

Todd Haynes

From the leg lamp to Ralphie's tongue getting stuck on a frozen pole to that BB-gun incident, 'A Christmas Story' has left its mark on all our brains, so much so that it sometimes feels like this story is our own.

Phoebe Robinson

To suggest that a Muslim cannot think for himself sounds to me very much like an incident of anti-Muslim bigotry.

Maajid Nawaz

Robert McKee says humans naturally seek comfort and stability. Without an inciting incident that disrupts their comfort, they won’t enter into a story. They have to get fired from their job or be forced to sign up for a marathon. A ring has to be purchased. A home has to be sold. The character has to jump into the story, into the discomfort and the fear, otherwise the story will never happen.

Donald Miller

Old Americana vintage gangster stuff has a fantastical feel; it feels less dirty in a way. It feels like the opera of crime.

Shia LaBeouf

A novel can be set in motion by an incident, a character, a location, a mood - by anything at all. Sometimes the stimulus can be an idea, which will rapidly clothe itself in character and incident. 'Foreign Bodies' came about through the contemplation of the contrast between post-second world war America and Europe.