A Quote by Monica Wood

It's often hard to determine, especially in early drafts, whether or not a story has a bona fide complication. Remember this: A complication must either illuminate, thwart, or alter what the character wants. A good complication puts emotional pressure on a character, promoting that character not only to act, but to act with purpose.If the circumstance does none of these things, then it's not a complication at all - it's a situation. This situation, or setup, might be interesting or even astonishing, but it gives the story no point of departure.

Monica Wood

Quote Topics

Act Alter Astonishing Bona Fide Character Circumstance Complication Departure Determine Does Drafts Early Either Emotional Even Gives Good Hard Illuminate Interesting Might Must No Point None Often Only Point Pressure Promoting Purpose Puts Remember Setup Situation Story Then Things Thwart Wants Whether

Quote Author

Monica Wood
Author

Every good story needs a complication. We learn this fiction-writing fundamental in courses and workshops, by reading a lot or, most painfully, through our own abandoned story drafts. After writing twenty pages about a harmonious family picnic, say, or a well-received rock concert, we discover that a story without a complication flounders, no matter how lovely the prose. A story needs a point of departure, a place from which the character can discover something, transform himself, realize a truth, reject a truth, right a wrong, make a mistake, come to terms.

Monica Wood

A well-chosen complication should give you choices. Juggling choices for your characters is what makes writing fun, after all. If you discover that you're struggling more than you ought to with a draft, perhaps you've run out of interesting choices, or have given yourself too few choices to begin with. Go back to the complication, fatten it up, and start over.

Monica Wood

The Jewish story is the story of wandering. It is the story of extraordinary heterogeneous complication.

Simon Schama

There is always going to be depth and layers to people and that's what interests me in a character: when there is some problem to overcome, when there is a complication to understand in a person.

Kalki Koechlin

With 'Lonely Thug,' I constructed a fantasy character who was very masculine and strong and almost threatening, but his demeanor belied some complication.

Arca

The weaknesses and biases of the international mechanisms of accountability make it seem desirable to extend the domain of accountability by empowering domestic courts to act as agents of the world legal system. Even if there is no consistent application of Universal Jurisdiction, it still leads those who might be prosecuted to alter their travel plans to avoid even the complication of waiting for a complaint to be dismissed.

Richard A. Falk

Prison life taught him how little one can get along with, and what extraordinary spiritual freedom and peace such simplification can bring. I remember again, ironically, that today more of us in the world have the luxury of choice between simplicity and complication of life. And for the most part, we, who could choose simplicity, choose complication. War, prison, survival periods, enforce a form of simplicity on us. The monk and the nun choose it of their own free will. But if one accidentally finds it, as I have for a few days, one finds also the serenity it brings.

Anne Morrow Lindbergh

If you look at coastlines, if you look at that them from far away, from an airplane, well, you don't see details, you see a certain complication. When you come closer, the complication becomes more local, but again continues. And come closer and closer and closer, the coastline becomes longer and longer and longer because it has more detail entering in.

Benoit Mandelbrot

I think it's hard to write a book about happiness because fiction requires tension and complication.

Edwidge Danticat

Luke Jermay is as devious as he's clever, and he's a Master at complication - with this take on TTTCBE he might just fool the Devil.

Roberto Giobbi

You have to have a character; you have to build your character. If you understand the pro wrestling scheme of things, then you understand what the promoting is. These guys are friendly backstage, but as soon as the cameras turn on, it's a whole different story: you become that character.

Colby Covington

Miscommunication leads to complication.

Lauryn Hill

I think it's really hard to make songs that pursue an agenda. You can kind of do it a little bit through a character, so the character gives voice to something or their story, the story of the character tells you something, but, for me anyway, it's really hard to write directly about politics.