#plot

We inherit plots. There are only two or three in the world, five or six at most. We ride them like treadmills. ↗

— Janette Turner Hospital

#inherit #like #most #only #plots

I always have one or two, sometimes more, Navajo or other tribes' cultural elements in mind when I start a plot. In Thief of Time, I wanted to make readers aware of Navajo attitude toward the dead, respect for burial sites. ↗

— Tony Hillerman

#attitude #aware #burial #cultural #dead

A state that suppresses all freedom of speech, and which by imposing the most terrible punishments, treats each and every attempt at criticism, however morally justified, and every suggestion for improvement as plotting to high treason, is a state that breaks an unwritten law. ↗

— Kurt Huber

#breaks #criticism #each #every #freedom

I always start with characters rather than with a plot, which many critics would say is very obvious from the lack of plot in my films - although I think they do have plots - but the plot is not of primary importance to me, the characters are. ↗

— Jim Jarmusch

#always #characters #critics #films #i

The pattern of a newspaperman's life is like the plot of 'Black Beauty.' Sometimes he finds a kind master who gives him a dry stall and an occasional bran mash in the form of a Christmas bonus, sometimes he falls into the hands of a mean owner who drives him in spite of spavins and expects him to live on potato peelings. ↗

— A. J. Liebling

#black #bonus #bran #christmas #drives

Music conveys moods and images. Even in opera, where plots deal with the structure of destiny, it's music, not words, that provides power. ↗

— Marcel Marceau

#deal #destiny #even #images #moods

I wasn't straining at the bit to become a movie star any more than I had plotted to get out of vaudeville and into Broadway musicals. ↗

— Ethel Merman

#become #bit #broadway #broadway musicals #get

This means keeping many trails open at once, inevitably requiring a fairly 'parallel' plot. This plot should be discovered rather than announced, so show, don't tell. ↗

— Graham Nelson

#discovered #fairly #inevitably #keeping #many

In Endless Quest books, you start the plot, and the character has to make choices. Then you have to write one choice over here, one choice over there. The author might get one or two choices out. ↗

— Margaret Weis

#books #character #choice #choices #endless

Favoring 'resolution' the way we do, it is hard for us men to write great love stories. Why?, because we want to tell too much. We aren’t satisfied unless at the end of the story the characters are lying there, panting. ↗

— Roman Payne

#feminism #fiction #literary-theory #making-love #panting