Plot Quotes

Plots are for dead people.

When I write my novels I don't really have a huge plan beforehand; I don't have the whole plot and architecture, so the story is sort of discovered as I write it.

In commercial fiction especially, everything in the story usually contributes directly to the plot The shorter the story, the truer this is

But really, if you ask me, there is only one kid of plot. One. Stuff happens. That's it.

Disturbing and intriguing. The Synchronicity Factor is much more than a page-turning thriller, for its remarkable plot is rooted in real science and real history.

Characters are story. And any great plot or subplot is driven by the characters' wants and desires.

Peace proposals unaccompanied by a sworn covenant indicate a plot.

Plot is very important to me, but I think my stories are stronger in character development.

Baseball is part of America's plot, part of America's mysterious, underlying design-the plot in which we all conspire and collude, the plot of the story of our national life.

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

Grief doesn't have a plot. It isn't smooth. There is no beginning and middle and end.

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

In comedy writing, a sitcom plot is basically the same thing: What's the worst thing that could happen? But you're playing it for comic effect. It's a similar muscle being used with Black Mirror.

I was attempting to write the story of my life. It wasn't so much about plot. It was much more about character.

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

A mystery novel localizes the awesome force of the real death outside the book, winds it tightly in a plot.

This element of surprise or mystery the detective element as it is sometimes rather emptily called is of great importance in a plot.

Plot is the knowing of destination.

It is easy to be beautiful; it is difficult to appear so. I admire you, beloved, for the trap you've set. It's like a final chapter no one reads because the plot is over.

Open Secret boasts a nifty plot and, in Coroner Fortin, a fascinating protagonist who will likely be around for a long time. Deryn Collier is a talent to watch.

I begin by writing paragraphs that don’t have an immediate relation to a plot. The sound of the story comes first.

It doesn't matter how complex your plot or your characters are; you have to be able to express the big idea of a film in a sentence or two.

No unemployment insurance can be compared to an alliance between a man and a plot of land.

[Gertrude Stein] really needed someone like Virgil Thomson, whom she respected, to sit on her a bit and make her devise some plot.

The opposing missions of the various characters create the plot.

I need time to develop the idea into a plot before I talk about it.

A plot begins when somebody has something to hide.

Welcome to the real world, she said to me. Condescendingly. Take a seat. Take your life. Plot it out in black and white.

The poem has to bear the weight with image, language... the screenplay with dialogue, plot.

I try not to divide plot and character. I get to know a character by what they want and fear and how those internal forces play out in their lives.

The only way I could finish a book and get a plot was just to keep making it longer until something happens.

Spy plots are hard, really hard.

My sister and brother are both writers as well. We are constantly discussing story and plot lines. And I love to discuss story ideas with my husband.

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.

Character is plot, plot is character.

A novel is a tricky thing to map.

It's easy now, now that it's a story. When you were going through it, it was life. Always much harder to get the plot line on.

Language is the ticket to plot and character, after all, because both are built out of language.

If you over-plot your book you strangle your characters. Your characters have to have enough freedom and life to be able to surprise you.

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

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

Personally, my taste is towards development of a character, as well as the resolution of a story plot. I like to find both, if I can.

I never plot out my novels in terms of the tone of the book. Hopefully, once a story is begun it reveals itself

Good manners, Madam, are had these days not For your asking, nor mine, nor what-we-used-to-be's. The day is a loud grenade that bursts a smile Of serious weeds in a comic lily plot.

I want the situations and plots to be surprising and unusual.

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

A good novel is an indivisible sum; every scene, sequence and passage of a good novel has to involve, contribute to and advance all three of its major attributes: theme, plot, characterization.

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.

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

It’s so real." "Most dreams are. It isn't until you wake up that you see all the plot holes.