A Quote by Russell Smith

Anyone who has set out to invent a purely imaginary story knows that the whole thing is fantasy, from beginning to end; there must be a sense of magic created about the most restrained of naturalism.

Russell Smith

Quote Topics

About Anyone Beginning Created End Fantasy Imaginary Invent Knows Magic Most Must Naturalism Out Purely Restrained Sense Set Story Thing Whole

Quote Author

Russell Smith
Canadian - Writer
Born: August 2, 1963

From the viewpoint of the writer, the most significant aspect of fantasy and science fiction is that stories of these kinds are either set in imaginary worlds or feature the appearance in the familiar world of some imaginary entity.

Brian Stableford

If the point of life is the same as the point of a story, the point of life is character transformation. If I got any comfort as I set out on my first story, it was that in nearly every story, the protagonist is transformed. He's a jerk at the beginning and nice at the end, or a coward at the beginning and brave at the end. If the character doesn't change, the story hasn't happened yet. And if story is derived from real life, if story is just condensed version of life then life itself may be designed to change us so that we evolve from one kind of person to another.

Donald Miller

In a closed urban fantasy, the magical world is secret and no one knows about it. In an open urban fantasy, everyone knows about it. So with a closed fantasy, you have to figure out how the world keeps itself secret, and with an open one, you have to figure out how knowledge of magic has altered the world we know.

Cassandra Clare

'The Black Prism' is a story of emperors and prisoners and magic set in a Mediterranean, 1600-esque world. It's a fantasy story; it's fast and fun and inventive.

Brent Weeks

For me, a great fantasy is real people, a world I recognise, human struggle and magic. You've got to have magic to make a fantasy work. But I like my magic to be subtle. I don't want magic coming out of the hands of wizards. I want it to be pervading, sinister somehow.

Fiona McIntosh

When I set out to write a screenplay, I have in my mind a beginning and an end but that end part continually changes as I start to write the middle. That way by the time the screenplay is finished I have taken myself and my audience from a familiar beginning point through the story to an unfamiliar ending point.

Christian Keiber

My own experience is that once a story has been written, one has to cross out the beginning and the end. It is there that we authors do most of our lying . . . one must ruthlessly suppress everything that is not concerned with the subject. If, in the first chapter, you say there is a gun hanging on the wall, you should make quite sure that it is going to be used further on in the story.

Anton Chekhov

What's amazing about 'Game of Thrones' is that it's set in a fantasy world; it's a fantasy story. So I always say that with the score, we're open to do whatever we want.

Ramin Djawadi

The thing I love about being a novelist is that with each project, you invent a new world. You approach it with a different set of aesthetic and structural ideas, and you grapple with a different series of problems in figuring out how to tell the story. And yet there are certain concerns that stay constant.

Adam Mansbach

I began plotting novels at about the time I learned to read. The story of my childhood is the usual bleak fantasy, and we can dismiss it with the restrained observation that I certainly would not consider living it again.

James Baldwin

If you're gonna tell a story from beginning to end, I always think you have to have a great structure in a script. If it gets you excited and it's something you've never read before that's another plus. I think also with improv and that whole world of stand-up, that's a whole other organism of comedy that still needs a story, but it's more free-form. On the set, it is the combination of both those worlds coming together: a great script and an allowance to play with it.

Sandra Bullock

You want a story? Read 'Gone With the Wind'. These aren't stories. They're joke books. The whole thing of a beginning, a middle and an end has been done to death.

Brian P. Cleary

The most wonderful thing in the world is somebody who knows who they are and knows where they're going and knows what they were created to do

T. D. Jakes

Since most problems are created by our imagination and are thus imaginary, all we need are imaginary solutions.

Richard Bandler

Once you call something a story, it's set in stone. It has a beginning, a middle, and an end that can't be transformed, because by definition, if you do that, it's not the same story anymore