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Stories Quotes

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Stories Quotes

“The novels take longer to write than the picture book texts, and they do take a different sort of concentration. However, a very short, simple story that works well is just as exciting to me as any longer and more complex book.”

Writing Wells Book Different Stories Simple Novel Exciting Complexes Concentration Picture Books

Author:Margaret Mahy

“Third person allows a deeper exploration of the relationships between characters. We can see their misunderstandings and hear what they think about each other. We can create a more complex structure with various story threads running parallel.”

Thinking Persons Character Stories Running Thirds Structure Complexes Various Deeper Exploration Thread Misunderstanding Parallels Third Person

Author:Juliet Marillier

“The Islamic conquest of India is probably the bloodiest story in history. It is a discouraging tale, for its evident moral is that civilization is a precious good, whose delicate complex of order and freedom, culture and peace, can at any moment be overthrown by barbarians invading from without or multiplying within.”

Moments Stories Order Culture Moral Civilization India Complexes Tales Islamic Delicate Evident Conquest Discouraging Barbarians Invading Multiplying

Author:Will Durant

“Even one word, or certainly one sentence, should be able to describe the basic characteristic that the scene has, or the character has, or the story has. And then you begin to detail that one spine, and you have offshoots from that spine, and it becomes more and more complex, but all of it stems from that one-word, one-line theme, which can give the character, the scene, or the play its uniqueness.”

Giving Should Play Character Stories Able Lines Scene Complexes Details Sentences Characteristics Theme Uniqueness Stem One Word Spine One Line One Sentence

Author:William Shatner

“The thing that you learn in directing is that when you're on the floor, no matter how complex the shooting is...you have to remain absolutely sensitive to every nuance of the behavior of the people around you. Because, ultimately, if you don't keep in mind the overall humanity, then the machine takes over and suddenly all you have are technically fine shots, technically good performances. The story's being told, but something's lacking, something mysterious, indefinable.”

People Ifs Mind Matter Stories Humanity Fine Behavior Shots Machines Performances Complexes Mysterious Shooting Sensitive Lacking Nuance Indefinable Lacking Something

Author:Irvin Kershner

“When scientists need to explain difficult points of theory, illustration by hypothetical example - rather than by total abstraction - works well (perhaps indispensably) as a rhetorical device. Such cases do not function as speculations in the pejorative sense - as silly stories that provide insight into complex mechanisms - but rather as idealized illustrations to exemplify a difficult point of theory. (Other fields, like philosophy and the law, use such conjectural cases as a standard device.”

Source: Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms

“In creating the strange milieu in which your story takes place, you must first understand as well as you possibly can the familiar milieu in which your own life is taking place. Until you have examined and comprehended the world around you, you can't possibly create a complex and believable imaginary world.”

World Firsts Wells Stories Life Is Strange Creating Complexes Familiar Imaginary Believable Milieu Imaginary World

Book:How to Write Science Fiction & Fantasy

Source: How to Write Science Fiction & Fantasy

“Reflecting on these complex relationships between reader and story, fiction and life, can constitute a form of therapy against the sleep of reason, which generates monsters.”

Reason Stories Form Sleep Fiction Reader Complexes Monsters Therapy Reflecting Complex Relationships

Book:Six Walks in the Fictional Woods

Source: Six Walks in the Fictional Woods

“The Da Vinci Code may well be the only novel ever written that begins with the word 'renowned'... I think what enabled the first word to tip me off that I was about to spend a number of hours in the company of one of the worst prose stylists in the history of literature was this. Putting curriculum vitae details into complex modifiers on proper names or definite descriptions is what you do in journalistic stories about deaths; you just don't do it in describing an event in a narrative... Why did I keep reading? Because London Heathrow is a long way from San Francisco International.”

“a novel is not born of a single idea. The stories I've tried to write from one idea, no matter how terrific an idea, have sputtered out and died by chapter three. For me, novels have invariably come from a complex of ideas that in the beginning seemed to bear no relation to each other, but in the unconscious began mysteriously to merge and grow. Ideas for a novel are like the strong guy lines of a spider web. Without them the silken web cannot be spun.”

Writing Ideas Matter Stories Guy Three Strong Grows Born Lines Novel Bears Relation Died Complexes Unconscious Chapters Spiders Terrific Spun Spider Web

Author:Katherine Paterson

“Very few writers understand the complex history and maddening social order of the Mississippi Delta. For Steve Yarbrough, though, it's home turf. He is wickedly observant, funny, cynical, evocative, and he possesses a gift that cannot be taught: he can tell a story.”

Stories Home Order Social Taught Complexes Cynical Mississippi Social Order Observant Delta Turf Mississippi Delta

Author:John Grisham