Top 1200 Story Writing Quotes & Sayings - Page 15

I am a creative person and watching a movie is like writing a story. So when I see a movie, I also see the editing, the music, the camera angles, etc.

When you read a supernatural suspense story or a ghost story, or a horror story, the evil at play is something that you can dismiss. And I wonder if, in this time, if people really want to be sitting on the subway reading a book about someone releasing a dirty bomb on the subway.

One constant writing ritual, no matter what I'm writing, is that I cannot write if people are around me. It wigs me out - the idea that someone is reading as I'm writing stuff.

To me, when one is writing sometimes about a very specific subject with very specific people, I feel like if that story doesn't cross over, it's not working. That's very beautiful to me, to be sitting in Berlin and there's an actor reading my book in German. I don't even know what's going on, except I know to feel my own rhythms in another language and say, "If this is going well, I think everyone should laugh around now." Then maybe there's laughter, and for me, it reminds me of how story can move around the world.

You learn by writing short stories. Keep writing short stories. The money's in novels, but writing short stories keeps your writing lean and pointed.

Translating Candide into tweets has really deepened my appreciation of his writing - it wouldn't work so well with nineteenth-century authors. Every single sentence in Voltaire seems to advance the story, and yet stand alone as a sound-bite.

Some say writing is its own reward. I write for money, but writing for money is not so bad, especially when that writing brings you joy.

If you want to study writing, read Dickens. That's how to study writing, or Faulkner, or D.H. Lawrence, or John Keats. They can teach you everything you need to know about writing.

The Prodigal Son story is, I think, the greatest short-story ever written. It has such drama in it, such great characters, it's so clear and concise, and it's entertaining in the sense that everyone can relate to it. But you have no doubt what our Lord was trying to communicate in the heart of that story. So the truth was not sacrificed on the altar of entertainment in that case. And it can be.

The seminal elements of what makes a story great - challenge, struggle, resolution - are the same whether we're talking about story content for a movie such as 'Rain Man,' or telling a purposeful story to forge new business relationships or conclude a fruitful transaction, such as acquiring an NBA franchise.

You have to have an eye and a feeling for where things go. Writing visually, writing textually, writing sonically. Text is visual for me and images are textual. There is power in the way ideas are arranged, not just developed rhetorically. Form is everything.

Any fiction should be a story. In any story there are three elements: persons, a situation, and the fact that in the end something has changed. If nothing has changed, it isn't a story.

Good stories flow like honey but bad stories stick in the craw [gullet]. What is a bad story? It's a story that cannot be absorbed in the first time of reading. It's a story that leaves questions unanswered.

When I'm writing, I'm trying to immerse myself in the chaos of an emotional experience, rather than separate myself from it and look back at it from a distance with clarity and tell it as a story. Because that's how life is lived, you know?

I don't believe in writer's block, writing well is very easy; it's writing horribly, the horrible work necessary to do to get to writing well, that is so difficult one may just not be willing to do it.

Film writing and concert writing are two very different things. In film writing I am serving the film and it tells you what to write. I have to stay within the parameters of the film. In writing concert music for the stage I can write anything I want and in this day and modern age rules can be broken.

Tell me a story then...keep me occupied." "A story?...What makes you think I can tell a story?" "Insight," said the king, "Go on.

The inspiration really comes first from the character and the story. That vision of what the story is, and what the character is, the world that they inhabit and what the story wants to tell. That's really what inspires me.

People in life take on certain stories and say, 'I'm going to be defined by this story and I'm going to live up to every inch of this story.' Sometimes you realize the story isn't fulfilling you and in fact you're not living the life that you're given.

I always have the best story at the party. Anyone telling a story at a party is like, 'No, no, you've got to listen to my story!' I'm like, 'Step aside, everybody. I'm going to blow the doors off this place.'

Writing a novel is always complicated, it's not like you snap your fingers and go, 'Ah, I know what I'll write'. For me, a lot of the time, I have to write and as I write, I learn about the story.

I think that television lately has been extremely dark and, in some ways, cynical but I also think that people who are writing those shows probably feel exactly as I do - that sometimes the darkness of a story can highlight the light in a story. There's a lot of cynical stuff but I think it may be even more in movies now where you see so many movies about cynical and corrupted characters. That's the state of many movies right now but movies, television, all of culture, there's always going to be a battle between the stories that are cynical and stories that are hopeful.

It's important that we share our experiences with other people. Your story will heal you and your story will heal somebody else. When you tell your story, you free yourself and give other people permission to acknowledge their own story

I believe that everybody needs to tell their story - to be heard, to be seen, to be acknowledged, to be understood. We all want that, deep down inside - and writing a book is a great way to make sense of your own experience and to share it with others.

When you're writing - when I'm writing anyway - I'm writing out of different kinds of preoccupations and obsessions, different forms of drivenness, and so you're really hostage those while writing. I am, anyway. And it's only when you finally take the finished thing out of the furnace that you see what it was that went into the making of the thing.

I feel for Veronica Mars so much when I'm watching at home. It is a wonderful story. The writing is consistently funny, biting, charming, heart-wrenching, etc. I also like the look of it. The cinematography - different from any other show.

After 'A Suitable Boy,' I didn't write anything, not even a short story. I thought to myself: 'I ought to start writing.' But I can never force myself to write.

This story ["The Depressed Person"] was the most painful thing I ever wrote. It's about narcissism, which is a part of depression. The character has traits of myself. I really lost friends while writing on that story, I became ugly and unhappy and just yelled at people. The cruel thing with depression is that it's such a self-centered illness - Dostoevsky shows that pretty good in his "Notes from Underground". The depression is painful, you're sapped/consumed by yourself; the worse the depression, the more you just think about yourself and the stranger and repellent you appear to others.

I hate writing. I so intensely hate writing - I cannot tell you how much. The moment I am at the end of one project I have the idea that I didn't really succeed in telling what I wanted to tell, that I need a new project - it's an absolute nightmare. But my whole economy of writing is in fact based on an obsessional ritual to avoid the actual act of writing.

I look at albums like novels. If you write a really good scene or a really good moment, just because you wrote it, doesn't mean that it fits with the story that you're writing.

I approach writing female characters the same why I approach writing male characters. I never think I'm writing about women, I think I'm writing about one woman, one person. And I try to imagine what she is like, and endow her with a lot of my own thoughts and history.

When I read the script of 'Karu,' there was a spark within, and I instantly connected with the story. I was emotionally attached to the story. After we finished shooting, I was so attached to the kid who played my daughter, I wanted to adopt her. That's how strong my emotional attachment was with the role and the story.

'J' is a novel. A story about what it is like for people after a terrible event. And it is a love story, because I feel a novel is inevitably a love story.

He did not know that the new life would not be given him for nothing, that he would have to pay dearly for it, that it would cost him great striving, great suffering. But that is the beginning of a new story -- the story of the gradual renewal of a man, the story of his gradual regeneration, of his passing from one world into another, of his initiation into a new unknown life. That might be the subject of a new story, but our present story is ended.

He made a story for all of them, a story to give them strength. The words of the story poured out of his mouth as if they had substance, pebbles and stone extending to hold the corporal up...knees from buckling...hands from letting go of the blanket.

It was not a choice of writing or not writing. It was a choice of loving my life or not loving my life. To keep writing was always a first priority.... I worked probably 25 years by myself.... Just writing and working, not trying to publish much. Not giving readings. A longer time than people really are willing to commit before they want to go public.

When I sit down to write, I don't think about writing about an idea or a given message. I just try to write a story which is hard enough.

One thing that's really pulled me in to helping artists create their album is that I get to help them tell a story. It's about the way you frame that story and finding the best way to tell that story.

For me, writing is fun. The day I quit my job and take up writing full time, writing will become just another job. A commercial necessity.

All we have is the story we tell. Everything we do, every decision we make, our strength, weakness, motivation, history, and character-what we believe-none of it is real; it's all part of the story we tell. But here's the thing: it's our goddamned story!

I am keenly aware that in writing about my mother, I am writing about my aunts' sister, and that in writing about my grandmother, I'm writing about their mother. I know that my honesty about how my view of these people has changed over the years may be painful.

I remember a point in [writing] the story where I said, "This isn't working, I should go and buy something at the supermarket or my wife will kill me." Then I said, "No, I'll go on."

One of the remarkable qualities of the story is that it creates space. We can dwell in a story, walk around, find our own place. The story confronts but does not oppress; the story inspires but does not manipulate. The story invites us to an encounter, a dialogue, a mutual sharing. As long as we have stories to tell to each other there is hope. As long as we can remind each other of the lives of men and women in whom the love of God becomes manifest, there is reason to move forward to new land in which new stories are hidden.

Whoever is writing in the United States is using the American Dream as an ironical pole of his story. People elsewhere tend to accept, to a far greater degree anyway, that the conditions of life are hostile to mans pretensions.

'Daredevil: Season One' is kind of in-between. On the one hand, sure, it's a graphic novel. But on the other, it's beholden to existing continuity, and we're still telling the story in issue-length chapters. So it's not that different to writing a miniseries, and I've done plenty of those.

Writing relies on very few things, my friend. All you need to write is your brain, a way to convey the story into existence (pen, computer, whatever), and a place in which to do it (office, kitchen table, lunar brothel).

People have been telling me I'm a failure and that I'm doing it all wrong for 20 years now. Never trust anybody when they tell you how your story goes. You know your story. You write your own story.

We think that we know people from this constellation of points: 'I know that story. I know that girl. I've heard that story a thousand times.' But actually, you never know that story.

People will ask me, "How do you approach writing books for young readers differently than for adults?" My answer is always: I don't change anything about the story itself. I'm going to tell kids the way things really were. What I don't do - and this is the only thing I do differently in writing for kids - is that I don't revel in the gory details. I allow readers to fill in the details as necessary. But I don’t force kids to have to digest something they’re not mature enough or ready for yet. If they are, they can fill in the details even better than I could, just with their imaginations.

Writing is writing to me. I'm incapable of saying no to any writing job, so I've done everything - historical fiction, myths, fairy tales, anything that anybody expresses any interest in me writing, I'll write. It's the same reason I used to read as a child: I like going somewhere else and being someone else.

I think I write and publish as often as I do because I can't bear being without a book to work on... I don't feel I have this to say or that to say or this story to tell, but I know I want to be occupied with the writing process while I'm living.

It's rare that I actually have a story in my head. I have events or 'what's the next move?' Like, Maggie, 'where's she going to go in this story, where's she going to end up?' Then the story has to fill in the in-between, and that comes as I'm starting it.

Reviewing music or reviewing anything is a writing job. It's nice if you are experienced in the field you are writing about, but writing is what you are doing.

Writing about real stuff that really concerned me brought out my craft. If you're writing a story about, 'Is Lois Lane gonna figure out that Superman is Clark Kent?' - it's really hard to get involved in that on anything other than a craft level. And I'm not gonna put down craftsmanship; it is a noble enough thing to have made a table that you can pound on and it doesn't fall down. But occasionally, we might have an assignment that engages some other parts of ourselves, and those tend to be the good stories.

I studied the short story as part of my creative writing course at university but then set off as a novelist. Generally, there is a sense that even if you want to write short stories, you need to do a novel first.

We have a writing process that's very much you try to create the character in a complicated way and then you let the story lead you to discovering who the character is in a natural way.

Films, fiction, can encompass a whole global vision on a particular subject with any story, whatever it is. You can play the story in whatever country with whatever language in whatever style you want to tell the story in.

In writing Snowboarding to Nirvana I have intentionally written an inspirational spiritual adventure story, which will hopefully provide people with metaphysical techniques, spiritual knowledge, hope and a brighter view of life.

A story is a story is a story. The only difference is in the techniques you bring to bear. There are always limitations on what you can and can't do. But I enjoy that. Just like when you write a sonnet or haiku, there are rules you have to abide by. And to me, playing within the rules is the fun part. It keeps the brain fresh.

Retiring from writing is not to retire from life, but retiring from writing is to avoid the inevitable bitterness which a writing career is bound to deliver as its end product, in almost every case.