When it comes to a character, I make sure that it adds to the plot.
I enjoyed doing the gag covers better than the story ones because they were usually simpler. A cover based on an incident in the plot took a great deal of staging to tell a little story that was still part of the book. And it had to make sense on its own.
When I watch a movie I don’t really care too much about the plot – not that it isn’t important, but what I remember is the visual imagery, something that happens in an individual scene.
I feel a lot of adult fiction looks down on plot as a lesser form of literature.
I’m really quite bad at coming up with plot ideas. I like to create characters and just see what will happen to them when I let them loose!
If you let the plot be determined by what you feel is in the character’s mind at that point, it may not turn out to be a very good play, but at least it will be a play where people are behaving in a kind of truthful way.
I start writing with only the vaguest idea about who my characters are and what is going to happen, and the characters and plot come into existence as I go. I’ve tried doing it the other way, but for me, outlining is a waste of time because I never follow the outline.
The first black president was a hotter plot line than the first woman president.
I don’t plot my books rigidly, follow a preconceived structure. A novel mustn’t be a closed system – it’s a quest.
Movies are all about plot. Theater, even if it’s story heavy, it’s about ideas. Theater has to resonate in your heart in a way that movies don’t.
It’s amazing how far you can get into a plot before you figure out what you’re doing.
Use plot to buttress a story.
In 2013, I transferred my company Essential Hospitality that owned the plot to RKW Developers against full and final payment. No loans were taken in this company and it was completely debt-free when we sold the same to RKW.
I feel like I know how to write plot.
Part of the plot was a knock that V wanted to bring down the government and bring chaos. I don’t know why I thought of Guy Fawkes, because it was during the summer. I thought that would be great if he looked like Guy Fawkes, kind of theatrical.
That’s the way life is: meaning is always there, but there is no clearly given way of decoding it. Conventional cinema obscures this with an easy reduction of meaning to plot and schematic characters.
The woeful tales of ‘Super Mario Bros.’ and ‘Street Fighter’ have taught studios that merely slapping a name to a movie is not enough to bring in the fans of the franchise. Also, the way games now unfold their stories more parallels that of a movie, with characters and plot points actually meaning as much as a high score.
The thing should have plot and character, beginning, middle and end. Arouse pity and then have a catharsis. Those were the best principles I was ever taught.
You learn different things through fiction. Historians are always making a plot about how certain things came to happen. Whereas a novelist looks at tiny little things and builds up a sort of map, like a painting, so that you see the shapes of things.
If my writing comes to a halt, I head to the shops: I find them very inspirational. And if I get into real trouble with my plot, I go out for a pizza with my husband.
The thing with ‘The Girl with a Dragon Tattoo’ is that is it’s like an Agatha Christie plot, and an investigating journalist is also a classic character.
‘Liv and Maddie’ actually started out as a different show called ‘Bits and Pieces,’ and it was a completely different plot, although it was the same cast.
‘Harry Potter’ shouldn’t be children’s first experience with suspense and plot turns.
What I have to outline is action and plot because I’m not particularly good at that.
It’s very limited what women who look like me can do on television. You don’t often see ‘my type’ on television unless she’s a sidekick – certainly not a three-dimensional series regular who is pertinent to the plot.
The story of ‘A Dog’s Purpose’ flowed into me a set piece. The entire book was just there, as if I were connected to a streaming service, a novel wholly formed of character and plot. This has never happened to me before or since. I prayed for help and I got it. A gift.
Grief doesn’t have a plot. It isn’t smooth. There is no beginning and middle and end.
When sex is necessary for the plot of a book, or a character development, then I don’t shy away from it. Why should I?
Even if I never sold another book, I’d keep writing, because the stories are here, in my head. Stories that just need to be told. I love watching a plot unfold, and feeling the surprise when the unexpected happens.
Biographies are, in their nature, far more difficult to make into films than novels, because novels come with plots constructed and dialogue written, whereas I don’t invent dialogue for my subjects or plot their lives for them.
Once you engage with the simple enough business of feeding yourself, of soil and water, weather, season and harvest, it becomes personal. It is about you, your family and friends. Food becomes an aspect of those relationships as well as your intimacy with your plot.
I’m not one of those politicians, to my probably discredit, who thinks very far ahead. It has to feel right to me and not be about a careful plot and plan.
There are many oral historians in America, but my books are made using the rules of novel writing. I have a beginning, a plot, characters.
Is it possible Hanukkah doesn’t inspire folksy songs? Plot lines may be a part. The Christmas story has a lot of material to work with. There’s Jesus and his birth, the wise men, their gifts and tons of frankincense.
I am greedy for both Hollywood and Bollywood. For me, Bollywood is not new, as it is something that I grow up on… I know the plot… stories and characters that are written and made. I haven’t got the right opportunity to show my work in Bollywood.
The sentence imposed on Abdul Kadir sends a powerful and clear message. We will bring to justice those who plot to attack the United States of America.
Most of us live in a fog. It’s like life is a movie we arrived to 20 minutes late. You know something important seems to be going on. But we can’t figure out the story. We don’t know what part we’re supposed to play or what the plot is.
I saw ‘The Help’ on DVD. I was blown away by Viola Davis: she really straddled that fine line in the plot between what was tragic and what was heart-warming.
When you describe a character’s dream, it has to be sharper than reality in some way and more meaningful. It has to somehow speak to plot, character, and all the rest.
As someone who is non-binary gender identifying, I feel a particular responsibility to portray members of my community on stage and on screen, not only as fully fleshed-out characters who are integral to the plot, but as characters whose gender identity is just one of many parts that make up the whole person.
Plot and character are virtually the same thing.
My forte is the plotting. You sit down, and you work out a plot.
The process is different for every book, but there are similarities. I always draw from the inside out. I don’t plot them ahead of time, and I’m always surprised by things that happen in my books.
It is scary for an actor when you get hired as a lead. No matter what the plot is, it is your job to do something interesting enough to make them want to get inside the lead character’s head.
I try to trace the connection between the characters and that way a story or plot emerges.
When you are a sentence-based writer, they have to be good. They have to be really on the spot. Because when you don’t have a plot, really, what shall you rely on? Just language. And sometimes I am so afraid of writing the wrong thing, I just sit and wait for the right thing to come.
There’s a lot of two-hander dialogue in ‘True Detective,’ and I needed to place those guys in locations where there were other levels of visual storytelling. It didn’t necessarily have to move the plot forward, but it had to add tone or add to the overall feeling.
I like to allow a story to arise as I’m writing scripts. I find it horrible when I try to think of something for the plot without really being on the ground and seeing where it goes.
I can tell you that as a writer and as a reader, I regard character as king. Or queen. No matter how riveting the action or interesting the plot twists, if I don’t feel like I’m meeting someone who feels real, I’m not going to be compelled to read further.
I love a well-plotted story. But I’m just not that kind of writer, and it’s not necessarily by choice. When I manipulate plot, I feel I lose authenticity.
Part of the reason why so many actors lose the plot when they go over to America is that they become part of an industry, so that’s why they don’t want to play weak, bad or vulnerable guys – because that’s not sellable; that diminishes their profit margin.
When I’m plotting out a book, I use a storyboard – I’ll have maybe three lines across on the storyboard and just start working through the plot line. I always know where relationships will go and how the book is going to end.
I love the Shakespeare history plays; I love the struggle for the crown as a plot.
I want my mom on ‘Scream Queens’. She could play someone who is convinced she’s Princess Leila. That could be her disease, and then as a plot twist, we could find out that she actually is Princess Leila.
