Top 50 Plots Quotes

Back in my 20s, when I wrote ‘A Place of Greater Safety,’ the French Revolution novel, I thought, ‘I’ll always have to write historical novels because I can’t do plots.’ But in the six years of writing that novel, I actually learned to write, to invent things.

I almost write to formula, because there’s a historical beginning, then the plots get convoluted.

The higher Greek poetry did not make up fictitious plots; its business was to express the heroic saga, the myths.

American mass media culture, with its celebrities, shopping hysteria, sound bites, formulaic plots, received ideas, and nauseating repetitions, depresses me.

Most crime fiction plots are not ambitious enough for me. I want something really labyrinthine with clues and puzzles that will reward careful attention.

I always start with characters rather than with a plot, which many critics would say is very obvious from the lack of plot in my films – although I think they do have plots – but the plot is not of primary importance to me, the characters are.

I think it’s a question which particularly arises over women writers: whether it’s better to have a happy life or a good supply of tragic plots.

The same way that some people can play the piano, I can do plots! They just come!

I was commissioned to write some romantic fiction, and I really liked doing those, and they were very instructive in terms of building characters and plots. But it never felt right for me.

The funny thing is, though I write mysteries, it is the one genre in adult fiction I never read. I read Nancy Drew, of course, when I was a kid, but I think the real appeal is as a writer because I’m drawn to puzzly, complicated plots.

No matter how many plots we uncover and disrupt, no matter how many terrorist organizations we degrade or destroy, another individual or group will rise to take their place.

Some writers can produce marvelous plots without planning it out, but I can’t. In particular I need to know the structure of a novel: what’s going to happen in each chapter and each scene.

Without – you know, good intelligence stops plots against the homeland. Without that intelligence, we cannot effectively stop it.

Certain personal issues forced me stay away from movies for a while but that does not mean I was idle and cut away from cinema. It was during that break that I wrote two books and found the time to dream about new scripts and plots.

I don’t think I could, with a straight face, describe myself as a completely positive person, but I’m not overly negative, either. On the whole, most writers think plots through to their consequences, and it’s not always a sunny place. I have an occupational temperament for anxiety.

As a writer, I try to appeal to the ‘elusive boy audience’ the same way I try to appeal to everyone: I do the very best I can to create interesting characters, addictive plots, tons of conflict, believable settings, unexpected plot twists, intriguing beginnings, and satisfying endings.

I’ve learned to look like I’m listening to long confusing plots of cartoons and comic books when I’m actually sound asleep or making grocery shopping lists in my head.

Plot is just not my gift. I’m fascinated with complex characters, and that doesn’t mix well with complex plots. And by the way, when the plot is simple, you can move one piece around and make it feel fresh. Hell or High Water’s a good example: I don’t tell you why the brothers are robbing the bank.

My task is to tell a story with the music. I always like to have themes in terms of characters or plots, and things that can tell a story always interest me the most.

I always tell my students to seek out other writers as models, and though it took me years to heed my own advice, it really was life-altering when I found writers who wrote long stories, full of back story and side plots and sub-histories.

I think modern television shows, with their intricate plots, are stimulating our minds. This is one reason IQs have been going up.

The so-called commercialism includes elements like story, plots, rhythms and large big scenes.

Today, somewhere in America, more foreclosures. More auctions. Another farmer plots his own death. And another. There is an art to making your death by combine look like an accident.

People talk about the plots and what happened, and they see your tricks a mile away.

The Indian audience is getting exposed to world cinema and realising the power of unique plots and distinct characters.

The brilliant thing about swimming is that, while you’re doing it, there’s nothing else you could be getting on with, like the ironing or sorting out the children. My mind goes into free-float mode; some of the best ideas for plots come into my head while I’m ploughing up and down the pool.

The stories about epidemics that are told in the American press – their plots and tropes – date to the nineteen-twenties, when modern research science, science journalism, and science fiction were born.

9/11 was a sort of hinge event in American history, and all jihadi terrorist plots or attacks are kind of filtered through that lens.

The winner must promote social jusitce, remove corruption and discrmination, and stand against political, cultural and economic plots.

Northern Sweden holds a special kind of magic. It’s cold, lonely, and the people are tough and silent, or so the stereotype says. This is Asa Larsson’s home turf and I find as much joy in reading her closely observed descriptions of the environment, as in following her intriguing plots.

The Monkees was a straight sitcom, we used the same plots that were on the other situation comedies at the time. So the music wasn’t threatening, we weren’t threatening.

We inherit plots. There are only two or three in the world, five or six at most. We ride them like treadmills.

There are only so many stories in the world… Duplication of plots is bound to happen because most writers have read very extensively in their genre and have become aware they are adding an extra layer to the meta-narrative, finding a new spin on the original.

Music conveys moods and images. Even in opera, where plots deal with the structure of destiny, it’s music, not words, that provides power.

Storylines are how characters create the plots involved in their stories.

I hate plots.

What I loved about romances was the character, and I think I still bring that to my novels. What romance taught me was that the ‘who’ will always matter more than the ‘what.’ It’s fun to come up with plots, but I want to make sure the reader cares about who it’s happening to.

Plots are artificial. Does your life have a plot? It has characters. There is a narrative. There’s a lot of story, a lot of character. But plot? Eh, no.

A lot of my early career, I wrote story songs that had narratives, that had plots.

As long as the plots keep arriving from outer space, I’ll go on with my virgins.

I’m real bent on dialogue. I’m just a little bit crazy and when you put that along with 20 years as a criminal lawyer, it’s pretty easy to come up with some interesting plots.

I’m not like Jonathan Hickman, who’s able to sort of plot out three years of a book ahead of time. I’m much more of a guy who plots out an arc or two at a time.

I look for material that both interest me and challenges me. If I am drawn to the material and I have to work hard at it, the characters and the plots reflect the hours and hours of research.

Those are my favorite kinds of movies, where the plots are quite small and character-driven.

I love soap operas – the stories, the plots! And I love the game shows and the courtroom dramas and the detectives – Jessica Fletcher, ‘Columbo,’ ‘Perry Mason,’ ‘L.A. Law.’ Any sense of guilt appeals to me in a television program – a sense of guilt, or a sense of making a lot of money.

Most detective story readers are an educated audience and know there are only a certain number of plots. The interest lies in what the writer does with them.

In silent films, quite complex plots are built around action, setting, and the actors’ gestures and facial expressions, with a very few storyboards to nail down specific plot points.

I like to believe my suspense novels marry the strong characters from my romance writing past, with the twisty, clever plots of my mystery writing present.

There’s that old adage about how there’s only seven plots in the world and Shakespeare’s done them all before.

I am not opposed to government efforts to stop terrorist plots. We are still seared by the memory of 9/11, and we should be.