The principle I always go on in writing a novel is to think of the characters in terms of actors in a play. I say to myself, if a big name were playing this part,...

J.R.R.Tolkien has confessed that about a third of the way through The Fellowship of the Ring, some ruffian named Strider confronted the hobbits in an inn, and Tolkien was in despair. He didn’t know who...

Don’t resist the urge to burn down the stronghold, kill off the main love interest or otherwise foul up the lives of your characters.

Not telling everything you know is not the same as telling a lie.

But, how do you know if an ending is truly good for the characters unless you’ve traveled with them through every page?

What a disgrace! They were afraid…ashamed…they chose to conceal it…they buried the roots of a Great Civilization…they lacked the courage to go further…and turned their backs on what science had to offer them…and tried to...

We maintain, therefore, that the first essential, the life and soul, so to speak, of Tragedy is the Plot; and that the Characters come second—compare the parallel in painting, where the most beautiful colours laid...

Story is honorable and trustworthy; plot is shifty, and best kept under house arrest.

But he doesn’t love her. I invented that. It is a plot if you imagine people in love–the lazy looping criss crosses of love, blows, stares, tears. No. It doesn’t happen. No love. People meet,...

Christ in a Pinata` how have I over complicated the plot?

He must shape simultaneously (in an expanding creative moment) his characters, plot, and setting, each inextricably connected to the others; he must make his whole world in a single, coherent gesture, as a potter makes...

The tragic fear and pity may be aroused by the Spectacle; but they may also be aroused by the very structure and incidents of the play—which is the better way and shows the better poet....

There’s an old rule of theater that goes, ‘If there’s a gun on the mantel in Act I, it must go off in Act III.’ The reverse is also true.

Reading a novel after reading semiotic theory was like jogging empty-handed after jogging with hand weights. What exquisite guilt she felt, wickedly enjoying narrative! Madeleine felt safe with a nineteenth century novel. There were going...

A novel is a tricky thing to map.

…my novels are like life – I never know where they’re going until I get to the end…

The truth is that, just as in the other imitative arts one imitation is always of one thing, so in poetry the story, as an imitation of action, must represent one action, a complete whole,...

Be a good listener in the special way a story requires: note the manner of presentation; the development of plot, character; the addition of new dramatic sequences; the emphasis accorded to one figure or another...

Writing fiction is the act of weaving a series of lies to arrive at a greater truth.

Part of the pleasure has to do with a sense of efficiency, of materials exactly allocated and completely used. Another part has to do with a sense of inevitability, the feeling that someone knew where...

Most of the movies are working like, ‘Information, cut, information, cut, information, cut’ and for them the information is just the story. For me, a lot of things [are] information – I try to involve,...

…you mean you don’t fit characters into a plot? excatly…

By mastering character and plot, you give your book a fighting chance and withoutcharacter and plot, no book can survive.

I’m trying to undermine the basis of Christian belief… I’m not in the business of offending people. I find the books upholding certain values that I think are important, such as life is immensely valuable...

A deus ex machina will never appear in real life so you best make other arrangements.

Despite my affection for subtext and plot and prose at its best… life, it turns out, is nothing more than the finer details.

You have to have a plot too, you know? Because without it, your life is less of a story and more of an empty paper.

Plot joined the expedition unwooed, as a necessary companion. It was not the scout. The scout was a certain mood. I followed that mood, and let the shape of the story flow from that.

Stories start in all sorts of places. Where they begin often tells the reader of what to expect as they progress. Castles often lead to dragons, country estates to deeds of deepest love (or of...

Life is like a story, when all the resolution is resolved, you heave a sigh of relief.

A director’s dream? No, Bollywood reality in 1995.Business is booming, but cliché’s are passée. A different sort of breeze-fresh, young-is unsettling fatigued conventions.

In our modern age, there are writers who have heaped scorn on the very idea of the primacy of story. I’d rather warm my hands on a sunlit ice floe than try to coax fire...

I hate when people ask what a book is about. People who read for plot, people who suck out the story like the cream filling in an Oreo, should stick to comic strips and soap...

I have no problem in moving a date one way or another or coming up with a subplot that gets my characters in (or out) of a fix more rambunctiously than the extant records show.

The life of a writer is directed by a mad impulsive muse, that can tell them to cancel all their storyline: a creative divergent devil.

When all the details fit in perfectly, something is probably wrong with the story.

Remember: Plot is no more than footprints left in the snow after your characters have run by on their way to incredible destinations. Plot is observed after the fact rather than before. It cannot precede...

My book has no plot. Wait, yes it does—in the cemetery. It’s a love story where one character is dead, and the other is a dirty pervert.

The telling of any character is what they do in a different situation.

Someone who smiles too much with you can sometime frown too much with you at your back.

SPOILER ALERT: EVERYONE FALLS IN LOVE & DIES!

(In reply to the question, ‘Would you like some suggestions for a plot for your next book?’)There are three problems with getting plot suggestions from other people. The first is that ideas are the easy...

You keep waiting for the moral of your life to become obvious, but it never does. Work, work, work: No moral. No plot. No eureka! Just production schedules and days. You might as well be...

Archive material is a fabulous starting point – individual documents are like signposted roads, heading to a variety of intriguing possibilities.

NOTICEPersons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.BY ORDER...

Dan, I’m not a Republic serial villain. Do you seriously think I’d explain my master-stroke if there remained the slightest chance of you affecting its outcome? I did it thirty-five minutes ago.

Taken together the Internet reads like the grandest character-driven novel humanity has ever known. Not much plot though.

A life without trouble and tragedy is boring and not a plot for comedy.

Occasionally a particular word or phrase in a letter or diary has sparked an entire plot – like an echo from history, still very alive.

T[he rules of writing] require that the episodes in a tale shall be necessary parts of the tale, and shall help to develop it.