A Quote by Maria Semple

I keep an elaborate calendar for my characters detailing on which dates everything happens. I'm constantly revising this as I go along. It gives me the freedom to intricately plot my story, knowing it will at least hold up on a timeline.

Maria Semple

Quote Topics

Along Calendar Characters Constantly Dates Elaborate Everything Freedom Gives Go Happens Hold Keep Knowing Least Me Plot Revising Story Timeline Up Which Will

Quote Author

Maria Semple
American - Novelist
Born: May 21, 1964

I keep an elaborate calendar for my characters detailing on which dates everything happens. Im constantly revising this as I go along. It gives me the freedom to intricately plot my story, knowing it will at least hold up on a timeline.

Maria Semple

Any plot you impose on your characters will be onomatopoetic: PLOT. I say don't worry about plot. Worry about the characters. Let what they say or do reveal who they are, and be involved in their lives, and keep asking yourself, Now what happens? The development of relationship creates plot.

Anne Lamott

Dates in Calendar are Closer Than They Appear! Time is what keeps everything from happening at once. Keep a diary, and someday it'll keep you.

Mae West

I believe the only way a writer can keep himself up to the mark is by examining each story quite coldly before he starts writing it and asking himself if it is all right as a story. I mean, once you go saying to yourself, 'This is a pretty weak plot as it stands, but I'm such a hell of a writer that my magic touch will make it okay,' you're sunk. If they aren't in interesting situations, characters can't be major characters, not even if you have the rest of the troop talk their heads off about them.

P. G. Wodehouse

A Thousand Pardons began at the beginning. I wanted it to be one continuous, almost breathless kind of story. In order to do that, it's really hard not to begin at the beginning. There's such a chain of consequence to everything that happens to main characters - it's very hard to break it apart and still be able to hold the plot in your head.

Jonathan Dee

I always start with characters rather than with a plot, which many critics would say is very obvious from the lack of plot in my films - although I think they do have plots - but the plot is not of primary importance to me, the characters are.

Jim Jarmusch

But keep characters in propinquity long enough and a story will always develop a plot.

Keith Miller

I think I regard any history in quotes, because just like science, we're constantly revising science, we're constantly revising history. There's no question that various victors throughout history have flat out lied about certain events or written themselves into things, and then you come along and you find out that this disproves that.

David S. Goyer

The romance is the primary plot in a story that has two plots. The second plot is not a subplot, but one that is interwoven with the romance plot (if that makes sense.) A story needs compelling characters in a compelling plot.

Madeline Hunter

The secrets that the characters hold are held back from the audience, and that's such a delight to hold onto. When you're playing scenes, it gives you an inner dialogue that allows you to really immerse yourself as the actor, in every scene that you're playing. Nothing felt expositional. Nothing felt like we were just doing it to move the story along. There was a reason these characters were saying what they're saying. It was a gift, really.

Tom Hughes

Do you ever get moods when life seems absolutely meaningless? It's like a badly-constructed story, with all sorts of characters moving in and out who have nothing to do with the plot. And when somebody comes along that you think really has something to do with the plot, he suddenly drops out. After a while you begin to wonder what the story is about, and you feel that it's about nothing—just a jumble.

P. G. Wodehouse

I do so much revising as I go along; I wonder how I could write books if I hadn't grown up in the computer age. I think I'd be a very different writer. I find myself cutting and pasting, changing things around and deleting whole paragraphs constantly.

Megan McCafferty

All that matters to me as a reader are characters. I want characters to be real, authentic, and rounded. I will be digging into characters for at least a month. Who they are. What they are like. Outside of the story.

Matt de la Pena

I've made the decision to adhere to three general truths when it comes to my novels: There will be a love-story element to the story, the novel will be set in eastern North Carolina, and the characters will be likeable. Then, I make each novel unique through differences in voice, perspective, age and personalities of the characters, and of course, plot.

Nicholas Sparks

I love finding out how authors work, because it can either go full Carrie in 'Homeland,' with loads of Post-it Notes and string on the wall and they know everything that's happening in the plot - or they let the characters tell them where they want to go and what happens next.