“Life is replete with comedy, drama, horror, suspense, tragedy, romance, mystery, fantasy and a good dose of fiction. While at times the plot may seem to be lacking, the special effects alone are well worth the price of admission.” LifeWellsMaySeemsRomanceLife IsFictionFantasyComedyMysterySpecialEffectsDramaHorrorTragedySuspensePlotLackingDoseAdmissionSpecial Effects Author:Derek R. Audette
“That’s the problem with fiction — or the charm, if you want. Even mediocre plots have a way of sinking their hooks into you, until you find yourself concerned for the fates of characters who aren’t even fully convincing.” IfsWayWantCharacterProblemFictionFateConcernedCharmPlotFinding YourselfMediocreHookConvincingSinking Author:Charles McGrath
“Unlike most wars, which make rotten fiction in themselves - all plot and no characters, or made-up characters - Vietnam seems to be the perfect mix: the characters make the war, and the war unmakes the characters. The gods, fates, furies had a relatively small hand in it. The mess was man-made, a synthetic, by think tank out of briefing session.” ThinkingMenMadeWarCharacterHandsSeemsPerfectFictionFateMessPlotVietnamSessionFuryTanksRottenSyntheticBriefingSmall Hands Author:Wilfrid Sheed
“In economics, unlike fiction and the theater, there is no harm in a premature disclosure of the plot: it is to see the changes just mentioned and others as an interlocked whole.” WholeFictionEconomicsTheaterHarmPlotPrematureDisclosure Book:the new industrial state Source: the new industrial state
“By denying people's sense of visual beauty in painting and sculpture , melody in music , meter and rhyme in poetry , plot and narrative and character in fiction , the elite arts wrote off the vast majority of their audience . They purposely excluded people who approach art in part for pleasure and edification in favour of social one-upmanship and an ever-narrowing, in-crowd elite.” PeopleArtCharacterSocialPleasureFictionAudiencePaintingApproachMajorityCrowdsNarrativeVisualsPlotMelodyElitesRhymeFavourSculptureMeterExcludedElitismEdification Author:Steven Pinker
“Most crime fiction plots are not ambitious enough for me. I want something really labyrinthine with clues and puzzles that will reward careful attention.” WantEnoughAttentionFictionCrimeRewardsCarefulPlotAmbitiousPuzzlesClueWant SomethingCrime Fiction Author:Sophie Hannah
“The most difficult part of writing a book is not devising a plot which will captivate the reader. It's not developing characters the reader will have strong feelings for or against. It is not finding a setting which will take the reader to a place he or she as never been. It is not the research, whether in fiction or non-fiction. The most difficult task facing a writer is to find the voice in which to tell the story.” WritingBookCharacterStoriesFeelingsStrongDifficultVoiceFictionReaderFindingsResearchTasksSettingSettingsDevelopingPlotNon FictionWriting A BookStrong FeelingDifficult TasksDevising Author:Randy Pausch
“And if I'm guilty of having gratuitous sex, then I'm also guilty of having gratuitous violence, and gratuitous feasting, and gratuitous description of clothes, and gratuitous heraldry, because very little of this is necessary to advance the plot. But my philosophy is that plot advancement is not what the experience of reading fiction is about. If all we care about is advancing the plot, why read novels? We can just read Cliffs Notes.” IfsWritingLittlesPhilosophyCareReadingSexFictionNovelViolenceClothesNotesGuiltyDescriptionPlotAdvancementCliffsAdvancingFeastingReading Fiction Author:George R. R. Martin
“Morality for the novelist is expressed not so much in the choice of subject matter as in the plot of the narrative, which is perhaps why in our morally bewildered time novelists have often been timid about plot.” MatterChoicesFictionSubjectsMoralityNarrativeNovelistsPlotSubject MatterBewildered Book:Outlander Source: Outlander
“All fiction is about people, unless it's about rabbits pretending to be people. It's all essentially characters in action, which means characters moving through time and changes taking place, and that's what we call 'the plot'.” PeopleMeanCharacterActionMovingFictionPlotPretendingRabbitsTime And Change Author:Margaret Atwood
“With non-fiction writing I feel like I'm confined and driven by what actually happened. That makes the "plot". So it's a process of getting all of my notes typed up, then scanning through the notes, trying to extract or find certain vignettes that seem like they might write well - that might have a potential for good energy, shape, etc. And then at some point I start stringing these together, keeping an eye on the word count.” FeelsWritingTryingWellsSeemsMightEyeTogetherCertainEnergyProcessFictionHappenedShapesNotesDrivenEtcPlotConfinedNon FictionFiction WritingGood EnergyScanningVignettes Author:George Saunders
“The fiction writer has a lot of balls to juggle. Setting, pacing, dialogue, and so on. And let's not forget: plot. That was always a hard one for me. And I always had this spastic tendency to wrap up a story before I'd seen it the whole way through, a sort of writer's pre-ejaculatory tendency: "The End!"” WayEndsHardWholeStoriesForgetFictionBallsSettingDialogueTendenciesSettingsPlotWrapsFiction WritersPacingOne For Me Author:Cate Marvin
“I began to write fiction on the assumption that the true enemies of the novel were plot, character, setting and theme, and having once abandoned these familiar ways of thinking about fiction, totality of vision or structure was really all that remained.” ThinkingWayWritingCharacterFictionVisionEnemyNovelStructureSettingFamiliarSettingsAssumptionThemePlotAbandonedWay Of ThinkingTotalityAll That Remains Book:A John Hawkes symposium: design and debris Source: A John Hawkes symposium: design and debris
“The subject of a novel is not the plot. Who remembers what happened to Lucien de Rebempre in the end?” EndsRememberFictionNovelHappenedSubjectsPlot Author:Graham Greene
“Well, it's my voice, so it's more accessible that way, and there are also all sorts of things like plot and timelines that are already known entities, so for me, it's very different from writing fiction.” WayWritingWellsDifferentVoiceFictionKnownPlotEntityWriting FictionTimelines Author:Alice Sebold
“I became much more interested in plot when I really didn't consider myself a writer anymore. When I was in an art context and I started to do installations, that was when writing of mine almost returned to fiction. Earlier I felt like I didn't have anything to write about, I could only concentrate on the page, I could only concentrate on words.” WritingArtFeltFictionMinesPagesPlotInstallation Author:Vito Acconci
“My writing has always been what you call 'narrative fiction' in the sense that it's got very strong plots and twists at the end.” WritingEndsStrongFictionNarrativePlotVery StrongTwists Author:Anthony Horowitz
“For me, wellbehaved books with neat plots and worked-out endings seem somewhat quaint in the face of the largely incoherent reality of modern life; and then again fiction, at least as I write it and think of it, is a kind of religious meditation in which language is the final enlightenment, and it is language, in its beauty, its ambiguity and its shifting textures, that drives my work.” ThinkingWritingKindBookRealitySeemsFacesLanguageReligiousFictionMeditationModernEnlightenmentFinalsPlotShiftingModern LifeAmbiguityTextureNeatQuaint Author:Don DeLillo
“I like writing non-fiction - and when you pick a [non-fiction] subject, it saves you the hassle of coming up with a plot.” WritingFictionSubjectsPicksPlotNon FictionHassle Author:Richard Hell
“Like a lot of writers, I just got sick to death of conventional fiction. I absolutely couldn't stand the illusion of reality and plot. I just couldn't stomach it.” RealityFictionIllusionSickPlotStomachConventional Author:Jane Alison
“With a novel, you have the reader with you a lot longer, and you owe him a lot more. Obviously you have to have a plot - I say "obviously," although I think a lot of fiction doesn't, and nothing seems to happen. But to me, there should be something that happens, and it should be at least vaguely plausible. And because the readers are going to be with these characters for a long time, you have to get to know them and like them and want to know what happens to them.” ThinkingKnowsWantShouldLongCharacterSeemsHappensFictionNovelReaderLong TimePlotPlausible Author:Dave Barry
“The older I get and the more fiction I write, the more I outline, the more I think about plot before I dive in and plunge too far.” ThinkingWritingFictionPlotOutlinesPlunge Author:Dave Barry
“What interests me about fiction is plot. And what interests me about plot is whether someone tells a story that moves me within the constraints of storytelling. And I have narrowly defined storytelling.” StoriesMovingInterestFictionStorytellingDefinedPlotConstraints Author:Malcolm Gladwell
“I love developing children as characters. Children rarely have important roles in literary fiction - they are usually defined as cute or precious, or they create a plot by being kidnapped or dying.” ChildrenImportantCharacterFictionRolesDyingDefinedDevelopingCutePlotKidnapped Author:Barbara Kingsolver