I believe the only way a writer can keep himself up to the mark is by examining each story quite coldly before he starts writing it and asking himself if it is all right as a story. I mean, once you go saying to yourself, 'This is a pretty weak plot as it stands, but I'm such a hell of a writer that my magic touch will make it okay,' you're sunk. If they aren't in interesting situations, characters can't be major characters, not even if you have the rest of the troop talk their heads off about them.
Character is the plot in many ways
Mockumentary formats are great for a couple of things. One of them is delivering the toughest part of any sitcom episode, what writers call "pipe" - the nuts and bolts of the story where you explain what's happening, the boring plot stuff.
plot is character in action.
There are few films where you have women really driving the plot.
I begin by assembling notes on characters. Large swaths of the plot become clear to me as I do this.
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.
I need time to develop the idea into a plot before I talk about it.
I have a plot, but not much happens.
Characterization is not divorced from plot, not a coat of paint you slap on after the structure of events is already built. Rather characterization is inseparable from plot.
Point of view is not something I consciously decide. Almost always, when I come up with a plot I find that the point of view has automatically arrived with it, part and parcel of the story.
Plot was always secondary in my mind.
I was born in the era of the novel. I've written many, as well as collections of poetry, and essays for mouthing off. I've written to inches, word-counts, page-counts, even the sonnet and the screenplay (which I call a plot poem). I write narrative. That's it. I just want to tell it.
Everyone must hoe his plot daily.
From beginning to end Wilde performed his life and continued to do so even after fame had taken the plot out of his own hands.
Use what you know. Draw from it. It doesnt always mean plot or fact. It means capturing a truth from your experiencing it, expressing values you personally feel deep down in your core.
I've always read suspense, so raising the stakes to life and death situations in my romance plots seemed natural.
Welcome to the real world, she said to me. Condescendingly. Take a seat. Take your life. Plot it out in black and white.
"Novels and gardens," she says. "I like to move from plot to plot. "
Ugh! How many stories about love, copulation, marriage and death already exist, not one of which tells the truth! How sick I am of well-constructed plots and brilliant writing!