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.Terry Pratchett
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Most of us live in a fog. It's like life is a movie we arrived to 20 minutes late. You know something important seems to be going on. But we can't figure out the story. We don't know what part we're supposed to play or what the plot is.John Eldredge
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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
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There is no better test of character than when you're tossed into crisis. That's when we see one's true colors shine through. So I try my best to make my characters personally involved in the plot, in a way that stresses them and tests them.Tess Gerritsen
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There is not one big cosmic meaning for all, there is only the meaning we each give to our life, an individual meaning, an individual plot, like an individual novel, a book for each person.Anais Nin
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Having a sense of purpose is having a sense of self. A course to plot is a destination to hope for.Bryant H. McGill
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Truth may be stranger than fiction on a plot and narrative basis, but fiction can investigate tone in a way that things based on a true story can't.Ray McKinnon
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I want my mom on 'Scream Queens'. She could play someone who is convinced she's Princess Leila. That could be her disease, and then as a plot twist, we could find out that she actually is Princess Leila.Billie Lourd
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In terms of the breadth of the threat of Al Qaeda itself - it's not the only terrorist organization, and it works with others as cells around the world in at least 60 countries. You potentially are talking about tens of thousands of followers who can be conscripted into service to carry out a terrorist plot.Mary Jo White
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I suppose it's possible that a writer would have feeling for his characters, but I can't see how, because writing is such a meticulous, intricate, technical business. I wish I could say that I love my characters and that frequently they take over the book and run away with the plot and so on. But they don't exist.John Banville
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Sometimes, by using the most over-the-top, ridiculous plot device you can imagine, you get some interesting little conflicts and cool things that you might not otherwise have a chance to explore.G. Willow Wilson
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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.Aristotle
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I tend to favour films that have multiple plot and story lines, multiple characters and ensemble pieces.Spike Lee
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I think invariably when you are dealing with relationships, the films really center on that, and the plot is really born out of that. That's the most core part of a relationship: intimacy, I think, whether it's expressed or not.Lisa Cholodenko
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While I've written in the POV (point of view) of adolescent characters before... I never have had to create novels in which those characters not only drive the plot, but also are instrumental in resolving whatever issue the plot deals with.Elizabeth George
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My goal is to write books that are quality books with very real characters and a gripping plot.John Searles
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In the U.S. - and elsewhere - successful parties need a storyline that voters can relate to, an intelligible plot of some sort, especially now that so many older, formal ideologies have lost force. For proof of this, one has only to look at Margaret Thatcher's career and ideas.Linda Colley
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Essentially and most simply put, plot is what the characters do to deal with the situation they are in. It is a logical sequence of events that grow from an initial incident that alters the status quo of the characters.Elizabeth George
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I force myself to outline, but not too closely, so I guess I plot by the seat of my pants? My natural instinct is to dive right in, but I know I'll get stuck. I like to stick with the architect vs. gardener metaphor. I guess I'm a gardener who plants tomatoes. I have the sticks in the ground and let the vines grow along those parameters.Victoria Aveyard
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You can only see 'Star Wars' for the first time once, and people are watching it again and again and again, and it's a testament to the strength beyond the plot twists that it has. The narrative strength that it has is that it can be enjoyed even though you know the biggest plot elements in it.Travis Beacham
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The king died and then the queen died is a story. The king died, and then queen died of grief is a plot.E. M. Forster
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All fiction is about people, unless it's about rabbits pretending to be people. It's all essentially characters in action, which means characters moving through time and changes taking place, and that's what we call 'the plot'.Margaret Atwood
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You can't build a plot out of jokes. You need tragic relief. And you need to let people know that when a lot of frightened people are running around with edged weaponry, there are deaths. Stupid deaths, usually. I'm not writing 'The A-Team' - if there's a fight going on, people will get hurt. Not letting this happen would be a betrayal.Terry Pratchett
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I started as a playwright. Any sort of scriptwriting you do helps you hone your story. You have the same demands of creating a plot, developing relatable characters and keeping your audience invested in your story. My books are basically structured like three-act plays.Suzanne Collins
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I've calmed down. Looking back, I was engaged more in dramas than I was in relationships. I've spent a lot of my life being in it for the plot, and I don't do that anymore. I'm satisfied. I'm not competing with myself. I accomplished things I wanted to do, so everything I do now is because I want to, not because I'm trying to prove something.Elizabeth Wurtzel
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When you get right down to it, there's something uniquely satisfying in being gripped by a great plot, in begrudging whatever real-world obligations might prevent you from finding out what happens next.Jean Hanff Korelitz
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Writers often like to talk about how intuitive the writing process is, but in truth, building a book is a remarkably unintuitive task. Or, to put it more accurately, you need a lot more than intuition. You need plot and characters. You need a setting. You need a theme that is relevant and supported by your text.Rebecca Serle
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Estimates are that in 2012, more than 32 million books were available - the explosion, thanks to the ease of self-publishing; 2013 could see even more titles grace our virtual bookstores! That means we are going to be awash in covers and titles, plot descriptions and characters.M. J. Rose
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While problems in a film are fairly easy to identify, the sources of those problems are often extraordinarily difficult to assess. A mystifying plot twist or a less-than-credible change of heart in our main character is often caused by subtle underlying issues elsewhere in the story.Edwin Catmull
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The plot of my 'Phantom' is pretty much mine. It's based on the Gaston Leroux book - I've taken a lot of liberties with it.Andrew Lloyd Webber
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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.Chuck Palahniuk
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I don't want to be Batman. Let Val Kilmer do it. I just want to be Uncle Batman. I have this whole 'warm relationship' plot in my mind. In the final scenes, the new Batmobile breaks down, the new Batman's stranded on the side of the road. We grab our old Batmobile, pick him up and drive away.Adam West
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I was not the young heroic model for 'Hamlet.' I tended to play those characters that orbited around them: the rogues and the rat bags and the idiots and the fools and the clowns that sway the plot somehow from a tangent.Geoffrey Rush
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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.Terry Pratchett
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The NSA is not listening to anyone's phone calls. They're not reading any Americans' e-mails. They're collecting simply the data that your phone company already has, and which you don't have a reasonable expectation of privacy, so they can search that data quickly in the event of a terrorist plot.Tom Cotton
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Mammootty came on board unexpectedly. 'Uncle,' which I am co-producing with Sajai Sebastian, was meant to be a low-budget film and we had almost cast another actor in the titular role. But, during the shoot of 'Puthan Panam,' I narrated the film's plot to Mammootty, who liked it and wanted to do the movie.Joy Mathew
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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.Vikas Swarup
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The most challenging and exciting aspect is the outline and formation of the plot points. This is the stage where the notion of the story begins to take shape, and I can see glimpses of what is to come.Tony DiTerlizzi
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I don't plot with huge detail, just big moments and important elements, and then I have a structure but can fly by the seat of my pants when I write.Rae Carson
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I'm really quite bad at coming up with plot ideas. I like to create characters and just see what will happen to them when I let them loose!Judy Blume
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When sex is necessary for the plot of a book, or a character development, then I don't shy away from it. Why should I?Laurell K. Hamilton
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Integration is the biggest con job ever pulled on any group of people, any nationality in the world. It was a plot by white liberals to gain black political power for themselves and their wild ideas, and for a few black bourgeoisie who were paid to exercise leverage as black spokesmen.James Meredith
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Sometimes I'll hear a phrase or a word and write it down in my little black notebook (a writer's best mate), then come back to it and work a plot around it.Paul Kane
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The earliest maps were 'story' maps. Cartographers were artists who mingled knowledge with supposition, memory and fears. Their maps described both landscape and the events, which had taken place within it, enabling travellers to plot a route as well as to experience a story.Rory MacLean
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The challenge that I set for myself was to see whether or not plot and structure could coexist, and why it was that we had to always privilege one above the other.Eleanor Catton
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Jill Eisenstadt's comic second novel, 'Kiss Out,' is a work of such extravagant wackiness, eccentricity, and exuberance that any attempt to squeeze it into the confines of a simple plot summary seems doomed to failure and is possibly pointless.Stephen McCauley
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Part of the mystique of shows like 'Curb Your Enthusiasm' is the idea that they begin with a couple of plot lines, and then a bunch of geniuses improvise dialogue. It's not quite that unstructured and loose. It makes for a good urban myth, but everything's a little more tightly scripted and programmed than that.Alan Thicke
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I better make the plot good. I wanted to make it grip people on the first page and have a big turning point in the middle, as there is, and construct the whole thing like a roller coaster ride.Mark Haddon
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When I work on a movie, I look at the script or watch the film, and I talk to my director or producers and make a plan: this is our main character; we need a theme for this plot. We need a love theme.Ramin Djawadi
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I actually hope people don't react to 'Impossible' in a way where they think it's terribly retro. The plot needed to do what it needed to do. But I'm a little surprised to find myself looking a little bit like an advocate of teen marriage. It takes some exceptional circumstances for that to be a reasonable idea.Nancy Werlin
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Write out the story - rapidly, fluently, and not too critically - following the second or narrative-order synopsis. Change incidents and plot whenever the developing process seems to suggest such change, never being bound by any previous design.H. P. Lovecraft
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The woeful tales of 'Super Mario Bros.' and 'Street Fighter' have taught studios that merely slapping a name to a movie is not enough to bring in the fans of the franchise. Also, the way games now unfold their stories more parallels that of a movie, with characters and plot points actually meaning as much as a high score.Rob Manuel
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I had to write something and couldn't think of a plot, so I decided to write a Cinderella story because it already had a plot! Then, when I thought about Cinderella's character, I realized that she was too much of a goody-two-shoes for me, and I would hate her before I finished ten pages.Gail Carson Levine
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'Where'd You Go, Bernadette' is an epistolary novel - one told in letters. I had no idea how much fun it would be, puzzling together the plot with letters and documents.Maria Semple
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