I don’t like to go to the movies to see violence or some kind of spy thing with all kinds of information you have to assimilate to understand the plot.
I have a book coming out in September, for example, where the plot concerns counterfeiting, and I had to do a lot of research on that. Or on any legal matters, for example, I have to do a lot of research online.
I never plot out my novels in terms of the tone of the book. Hopefully, once a story is begun it reveals itself.
I always wanted to, at some point, sit down and consider how to plot out one piece of work, one album, from start to finish.
I want a state funeral with bells ringing across the land! Then I’d love the congregation to do the hokey cokey and for can-can girls to dance down the aisle. I’ve already bought the plot in Worcestershire next to my parents.
The plot of ‘Stranger Things’ is so simple that even a brief description risks spoiling it.
Story and plot, not historical facts, are the engine of a novel, but I was committed to working through the grain of actual history and coming to something, an overall effect, which approximated truth.
If your characters are two-dimensional and your plot uncompelling, it won’t matter how incredibly detailed and believable your fantasy world might be.
Writing is truly a creative art – putting word to a blank piece of paper and ending up with a full-fledged story rife with character and plot.
Plot is a framework on which to drape other things. So once that’s working, I can just let it go and do all the stuff that I love – ‘Trojan horse’ it. There are so many great YA heroines, and that’s fantastic, but what about the emotionally complex boy out there? That’s who I tend to write about.
I’m always writing about character first. Plot, such as it is, comes from the characters.
In my books, women often solve the problem. Even if the woman is not the hero, she’s a strong character. She does change the plot. She’ll often rescue the male character from some situation.
Sitcom writing is difficult because it’s not just about writing jokes – there’s a very fine balance between characters, plot, and comedy, that if you get one thing wrong, the whole castle comes falling down.
Stripped of its plot, the ‘Iliad’ is a scattering of names and biographies of ordinary soldiers: men who trip over their shields, lose their courage or miss their wives. In addition to these, there is a cast of anonymous people: the farmers, walkers, mothers, neighbours who inhabit its similes.
I would say I have sort of a natural gift for character, and following one person’s point of view at a time, and dialogue, but I’m not naturally good at strong plot.
With fiction, you can talk about plot, character and narrative, whereas a poem brings home the fact that everything that happens in a work of literature happens in terms of language. And this is daunting stuff to deal with.
Things live and die, and then someone processes them into edible portions. This is a complete telling of the story, ‘Food.’ The basic plot hasn’t changed for centuries. I shouldn’t need to know any more details, any more history, in order to decide if my food tastes good or not.
This means keeping many trails open at once, inevitably requiring a fairly ‘parallel’ plot. This plot should be discovered rather than announced, so show, don’t tell.
I think invariably when you are dealing with relationships, the films really center on that, and the plot is really born out of that. That’s the most core part of a relationship: intimacy, I think, whether it’s expressed or not.
I shy away from plot structure that depends on the characters behaving in ways that are going to eventually be explained by their childhood, or by some recent trauma or event. People are incredibly complicated. Who knows why they are the way they are?
I start ‘The Code Book’ with the story of Mary Queen of Scots and the Babington Plot, which was foiled when Mary’s enciphered messages fell into the hands of Elizabeth I’s codebreakers.
The redemption plot is one of the oldest story shapes.
‘Blood Host’ is super heavy. Especially on the verses, it has an industrial stomp. It’s one of my favourite tracks just because the plot of it is so heavy. It’s a total crushing tune; it doesn’t get any heavier than that main riff, just a straight quarter-note powerhouse.
In winter, I plot and plan. In spring, I move.
The first time I re-discovered the joy of watching an action movie was when I saw ‘Die Hard.’ It was a completely simple plot – a guy goes to meet his wife, and the building gets taken over by terrorists – but I was completely blown away. Great characters, and it moved along really fast.
We will never be a part of any plot against those who are governing our country.
Every book has got its challenges. You run into a plot point that you can’t figure out, or a scene that you struggle to write and have to write 50 times.
Sometimes television can just jump from one bit of plot to the next, and the words fill in the in-between.
A story to me means a plot where there is some surprise. Because that is how life is – full of surprises.
I’m not an enormous proponent of plot as a reader. It’s about other things; my reading has become specialized over the years.
I really try to plot in a fearless fashion. I try not to care about not knowing the answer before I get there; I just jump in first and see what happens.
I believe in plot, in development of character, in the effect of the passage of time, in a good story – better than something you might find in the newspaper. And I believe a novel should be as complicated and involved as you’re capable of making it.
I am a firm believer that a good plot makes for a fun enough read, but it’s not what binds us. If we don’t care about the characters, we won’t care – not in a lasting way – about what’s happening to them.
In a lot of ways, TV writing taught me how to be a good storyteller. I learned about dialogue, scenes, moving the plot forward.
I saw the Kino print of ‘The Man From Beyond,’ but apparently a superior new print has been produced by Restored Serials. Maybe a few snippets of missing footage will close up some of the plot holes, but I have my doubts.
‘The Merchant of Venice’ is a straightforward, clear story, while ‘The Winter’s Tale,’ as a general rule, is hard to present because there is so much plot.
It’s an interesting plot device to enter in a third wheel – it always helps raise the stakes for all parties involved. But often, those characters can be one-dimensional.
I think as soon as you start believing you’re doing something superior to other people, then you start losing the plot.
From a plot perspective, what I finally found for my touchstone was that I consider ‘Upside’ to be a loose telling of Jane Austen’s ‘Emma,’ or ‘Clueless.’
In addition to the wishes of the client, the position, orientation, and size of the plot also play an important role in determining the final plan of the house. The ‘where’ and ‘how’ of the exterior then follows naturally from all of that.
I always think plot is what you fall back on if you can’t write, to keep things going.
When a number of crimes – for instance, burglaries – can be linked to the same offender, police often plot the locations on a map. The art of finding the location of the criminal’s home based on the crime sites is a key objective in what is known as geographical profiling.
I don’t want to be Batman. Let Val Kilmer do it. I just want to be Uncle Batman. I have this whole ‘warm relationship’ plot in my mind. In the final scenes, the new Batmobile breaks down, the new Batman’s stranded on the side of the road. We grab our old Batmobile, pick him up and drive away.
Since Queens is the most ethnically diverse plot of land on Earth, we had tenants from all over the globe. The whole world in one building.
My sister and brother are both writers as well. We are constantly discussing story and plot lines. And I love to discuss story ideas with my husband.
I think ‘The Avengers’ is a Black Widow movie. She saves the day. And if you take her out, the plot does not function.
Some movies I see today have the most dramatic plot points but the actors are not playing them dramatically.
I don’t care how good a song is – if it holds back the storyline, stalls the plot, your audience will reject it.
The conventional Aristotelian plot proceeds by means of a protagonist, an antagonist, and a series of events comprising a rising action, climax and denouement.
I could make up characters till the cows came home. Plot’s what hard. Very hard.
Try this experiment: Pick a famous movie – ‘Casablanca,’ say – and summarize the plot in one sentence. Is that plot you just described the thing you remember most about it? Doubtful. Narrative is a necessary cement, but it disappears from memory.
Typically, I have a fairly good grip on the plot of a suspense novel before I set about writing it. I must know beforehand how the mystery ultimately will be solved.
Those who plot the destruction of others often perish in the attempt.
Plot is not my forte. It’s like I have to live in my head in the book for a while before I figure out what the story is… My process is a bit messier.
Plot exposition that can be gently wound out by the authorial voice and internal monologue of a character in the length of a page has to be delivered in a matter of seconds on the stage.
