Plot Quotations | Page 2

One of the things I learned as a young semiotics nerd was that if you have plot moving forward, no matter how banal the facts of it, simply the fact that the plot is rolling forward makes you wonder what's going to happen next, which creates suspense. So you can control peoples' attention simply by having things move forward in a story.

I write fast. But it takes me a while to get going. It's very important for me to see my whole plot. I have to see the end first because I like a surprise in the end. Which is why I let characters and plot gestate in my mind.

I just focus on getting the first scene right, with a few lines about the overall plot, and then the book grows organically.

The Carrie in the plot was too much like the Carrie in the book. She smoked, she swore a lot, she was very hard, very cynical. I could never have pulled it off.

A loving mother-son relationship is always a plot or outwitting of some kind. 'Don't tell anyone, but...' my mother was always saying to me - when I wasn't saying it to her.

Storytelling is about two things; it's about character and plot.

DePaul's plot to deny me tenure had nothing to do with my faults. In fact, and ironically, it viciously attacked me and destroyed my career because of my virtues. Which, although few in number, they still found threatening.

Once a novel gets going and I know it is viable, I don't then worry about plot or themes. These things will come in almost automatically because the characters are now pulling the story.

You learn different things through fiction. Historians are always making a plot about how certain things came to happen. Whereas a novelist looks at tiny little things and builds up a sort of map, like a painting, so that you see the shapes of things.

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.

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.

Having a sense of purpose is having a sense of self. A course to plot is a destination to hope for.

I have my tombstone already. A tombstone company in the East gave it to me when I jumped Snake Canyon. My plot is in Montana.

Movies are all about plot. Theater, even if it's story heavy, it's about ideas.

The first black president was a hotter plot line than the first woman president.

The initial attraction of a political convention was that often the outcome was not preordained. There was at least some element of surprise. But, now it's like tuning in to a movie where you already know the plot and the ending. It's just not that interesting.

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.

There must be a better reason to have a baby than to provide a plot point in a rom-com. Don't you think?

I don't plot my books rigidly, follow a preconceived structure. A novel mustn't be a closed system - it's a quest.

I always have a basic plot outline, but I like to leave some things to be decided while I write.

Storytelling is ultimately a creative act of pattern recognition. Through characters, plot and setting, a writer creates places where previously invisible truths become visible. Or the storyteller posits a series of dots that the reader can connect.

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 did green screen for the first time! I wouldn't like to do a whole movie of green screen, though. You kind of forget the plot a little - like being in a Broadway play and doing it over and over and forgetting your line halfway through.

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.

In 2008, while the film version of my book 'Choke' was coming to market, my mother was diagnosed with lung cancer. That meant that I had to appear in public to promote a comedy about a son trying to save his dying mother - the plot of Choke - while privately I was caring for my own dying mother. It was torture.

In constructing the plot and working it out with the proper diction, the poet should place the scene, as far as possible, before his eyes. In this way, seeing everything with the utmost vividness, as if he were a spectator of the action, he will discover what is in keeping with it, and be most unlikely to overlook inconsistencies.

Younger people have greatest fears. Why is that? Because they don't know the plot. They don't know their own individual plot... they don't know what's going to happen to them.

It's hard to write a good plot, it's very hard.

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.

I think the great thing about the Jack Ryan films is that the plot and the story always take center stage. If you've done your job as the actor portraying Jack Ryan, you are present enough to make an impact, but you let the story shine.

You can't remember the plot of the Dr Who movie because it didn't have one, just a lot of plot holes strung together. It did have a lot of flashing lights, though.

Sometimes, like in 'Invisible Monsters,' I get too out of control, and instead of a plot point every chapter, I want a plot point in every sentence.

If you let the plot be determined by what you feel is in the character's mind at that point, it may not turn out to be a very good play, but at least it will be a play where people are behaving in a kind of truthful way.

The plot . . . involved discussion of the ownership of one of the major Ukrainian TV channels and in order to bring about this, the prime minister acted in such a manner,

The plot behind this terror attack is obvious - to agitate the situation in a country that holds a leading position in the Arab world and to undermine the situation in the Middle East as a whole.

When we were preparing the president's speech we had originally picked a different plot to try and declassify to talk about.

With the plot effectively beaten back, we can now get back on track.

Wake the power within thee slumbering, trim the plot that's in thy keeping, thou wilt bless the task when reaping sweet labour's prize.

Resolution and conclusion are inherent in a plot-driven narrative.

With relatively few exceptions, the novel sacrifices too much, for me, on the altar of plot.

The absence of plot leaves the reader room to think about other things.

I'm one of the lucky writers: plots come easily to me

Anything that happens on any show is a plot contrivance because that's just storytelling.

Plots are no more exhausted than men are. Every man is a new creation, and combinations are simply endless.

Personally, I avoid deus ex machina like the plague - if you have to use one, it means you failed to set up the universe and the plot properly. It's like a whodunnit where there's no actual way for the reader to identify the perpetrator before the climactic reveal: there's no sense of closure for the reader.

I have suggested that behind almost all myth lies the mono-plot of the game of hide-and-seek.

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

[In plotting earthquake measurements] the range between the largest and smallest magnitudes seemed unmanageably large. Dr. Beno Gutenberg then made the natural suggestion to plot the amplitudes logarithmically.

The more subtle and elegant you are in hiding your plot points, the better you are as a writer.

Good characters the reader cares about combined with an intriguing plot. Do those two and you've got it made.

"Novels and gardens," she says. "I like to move from plot to plot."

Motivation is the power behind plot.

A plot without action is like pasta without garlic, like Dolly Parton without cleavage, and like a writer without his similes.

I know you can't see it, not you, Ed, but maybe if I tell you the whole plot you'll understand it this once, because even now I want you to see it. I don't love you anymore, of course I don't, but there's still something I can show you. You know I want to be a director, but you never truly see the movies in my head and that, Ed, is why we broke up.

Science fiction is an amazing literature: plot elements that you would think would be completely worn out by now keep changing into surprising new forms.

I learned everything I know about plot from Dame Agatha (Christie).

I plot my ascent daily.

I don't relax, I don't celebrate. I sit and plot.

This world of ours has been constructed like a superbly written novel: we pursue the tale with avidity, hoping to discover the plot.

We want to grow the idea of reading gardens across the country. Our aim is to inspire. We want people to see a neglected plot and envision a reading garden to improve the environment and lives.

[On the movie "American Hot Wax:] A plot so thin you could thread a needle with it.

The fact is that plot has brought out the best in me.

My stories do have plot. They're not just scattered language; they're controlled, toward an end.

I don't really care about plot; I want to have a page-turner in a different kind of way.

We tolerate differences of opinion in people who are familiar to us. But differences of opinion in people we do not know sound like heresy or plots.

Plots behind plots, plans behind plans. There was always another secret.

I confess that I cannot understand how we can plot, lie, cheat and commit murder abroad and remain humane, honorable, trustworthy and trusted at home.

I'm frustrated when I see movies in which I feel like the plot is being told to me instead of shown to me.

The CIA has a plot...they've used before to get rid of world leaders. Only problem...is convincing Hussein...to fly to Dallas.

Characters should on the whole, be under rather than over articulate. What they intend to say should be more evident, more striking (because of its greater inner importance to the plot) than what they arrive at saying.

Plot is the knowing of destination.

Each piece of dialogue MUST be "something happening". . .The "amusing" for its OWN sake should above all be censored. . .The functional use of dialogue for the plot must be the first thing in the writer's mind. Where functional usefulness cannot be established, dialogue must be left out.

Some movies I see today have the most dramatic plot points but the actors are not playing them dramatically.

She can guarantee to move a million copies on the newsstand. Though Aniston is still huge, I'd say Angelina managed to one-up her again by getting pregnant. Now, she's got a more interesting plot line, and readers are going to keep watching that for a long, long time.

Mr. Fortier was the best, the most damning, the most direct and the only witness who could provide direct evidence of the planning, preparation, motivation and execution of the bomb plot of (Timothy) McVeigh and (Terry) Nichols.

Much like 24, Prison Break is packed with multiple plot twists.

One of the things our movie is going to deal with is what happened in 60 years. Which world was better? Sixty years ago or now? Within, obviously, a kick-ass plot and all the stuff that you've come to expect from a superhero movie.

One thing that we learned that we published on our blog post is that uniformly, men lie about their height by almost exactly two inches. So if you look at a plot of census bureau data on the distribution of men's heights in the U.S. and you plot men's heights on OKCupid, it is exactly shifted two inches to the left.

No good opera plot can be sensible:... people do not sing when they are feeling sensible.

Plot, plot and more plot. Many layers to the storytelling and a huge cast of characters that are very well developed,

Plot is what happens in your story. Every story needs structure, just as every body needs a skeleton. It is how you 'flesh out and clothe' your structure that makes each story unique.

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 wish we could say ... that this is a time for peaceful remembrance, that we were gathering today to commemorate a danger that had long since past, ... ... But we cannot. The enemy, though seriously weakened and continuously under pressure, continues to plot attacks and the danger they pose to the free world is real and present.

I work on one book at a time. And yes, I am immersed. Six days a week for four to six hours a day. In between books, I stop writing for as much as two to three months, but during that time, I do research and think, plot and plan the book.

I couldn't really understand the basic plot of The World Is Not Enough. What does Bond have to do with that? And to have M in Azerbaijan? For what purpose would M travel there?.And what was exactly the goal of the Villain in that one? So complicated.

I believe that if the story is fleshed out and the characters more believable, the reader is more likely to take the journey with them. In addition, the plot can be more complex. My characters are very real to me, and I want each of my characters to be different.

I am thrilled that we are here to celebrate the groundbreaking of the Planet Hollywood Towers by Westgate. Westgate Resorts is one of the largest and most successful vacation ownership companies in the world, and this incredible building will dramatically increase guest traffic, room count and the overall Planet Hollywood Resort & Casino experience. I could not be more pleased to be working with David Siegel, a pioneer and visionary in the tourism industry. The development of this plot of land, coupled with the complete redesign of our facade and casino, and the agreement with the shopping mall on enhanced entrances, including access to the Planet Hollywood Towers by Westgate, has created a seamless and completely integrated resort complex. I would like to thank David Edelstein and Boulevard Invests for working diligently with us on integrating our collective properties.

I hate SF books that think all you need to make a book is cool technology and mind-bending ideas without a decent plot or characters. And I hate when fantasy books are allowed to ramble off into five hundred page diatribes which don't advance the story one bit.

I find that I am much slower in the beginning of a book. I am thinking of the plot, of the characters and who they are, and where they are going. I often throw out a lot of the writing I start with, because the characters and plot improve as I write. Or perhaps I should say it is my hope they will improve as I write.

I find inspiration in many places. Sometimes music gives me the kernel of a story. Sometimes it's dissatisfaction with the plot of a movie or a book that gets me thinking. Sometimes it's love of a movie or book.

For years, I sort of would try to write a story that somehow fit the title. And I don't think it happened for maybe another four years that I actually thought of a story, the plot of a story that corresponded to that phrase.

I earned my Ph.D. in philosophy, and one of my specializations was the logic and mathematics of game theory. I've also got a degree in drama, so I know about stories, characterizations, plot arcs, and the like. Lots of game designers can do one or the other: I've got the skills for both.

If we stop fighting the terrorists in Iraq, they would be free to plot and plan attacks elsewhere, in America and other free nations,

He was born in Germantown, just outside of Memphis. There's a family plot there.

We've got to haveWe plot to haveFor it's so dreary not to haveThat certain thing called the Boy Friend.

He lied so the plot could proceed unimpeded. With that lie, he caused the deaths of nearly 3,000 people. He rejoiced in the death and destruction.

He lied so the plot could proceed unimpeded.

There are the characters who die but who you follow after death, and they often lead much more interesting lives after they are dead! So the characters usually drive me along, but occasionally the plot has to come first. It can get sticky.

I was involved in the students' union and I had a meeting in London, chaired by the president of the students' union Charles Clarke (now Home Secretary). Howard had no plans for the weekend, so we hatched this plot whereby I took the money for the train fare, but, instead of getting the train, he could borrow a car off a friend, the train fare would pay for petrol and we could stop at his friend Richard's house in Reading,

J.K. Rowling said Bellatrix's role was going to be significant in the last one, when I showed some reluctance in playing a tiny bit part. Up front, they said, 'You're very significant in the last one.' But significant could mean a lot of things. That could just mean a significant plot point. Doesn't necessarily equal big part.