Fede Alvarez Quotes

It was unpredictable, good storytelling that brought you back each week.

I love a really good storyline.

What resonates with me whenever I watch a great movie or TV show is the balance of inevitability and unpredictability. And it's a very delicate balance.

I love a good cliffhanger. I love when big events happen in shows. I love shows that aren't afraid to take risks and to really do what's best for the story line and realistic for the story line.

As a rule, anyone who can tell a good story can write one, so there really need be no mistake about his qualification; such a man will be careful not to be wearisome, and to keep his point, or his catastrophe, well in hand.

A story to me means a plot where there is some surprise. Because that is how life is - full of surprises.

Nothing bores me more than books where you read two pages and you know exactly how it's going to come out. I want twists and turns that surprise me, characters that have a difficult time and that I don't know if they're going to live or die.

Tension is the cornerstone of any good story.

Sometimes, you don't realize that something is actually a sidetrack for the story, or it takes the tension out of a scene.

I think predictability is built into any good novel in some way - you begin reading Anna Karenina and you know pretty much what's going to happen at the end. But that doesn't mean you know what's going to happen in the middle. For me, it's that sense of what happens in the middle that's important.

I enjoy a good cliffhanger. As a reader, I relish that nervous feeling you get when you're engrossed in a story, but in the back of your mind you're aware that there aren't that many pages left. How will it end? Everything can't be wrapped up! This can't end! Then it does, and your heart seems to stop.

I believe thrillers work if the story is good. It is not easy to make a thriller because the audience is making their own story in their minds as they watch the film. You have to break that expectation and still make them like the film.

For film and theater, you know how the story starts; you know how the story ends. With TV, you don't. It's literally like living real life in character.

When you think of a great twist or a red herring or a way of misdirecting the reader, it is good, but you know that they are just tricks at the end of the day, and the way to keep interest is to write characters that people care about.

I began to be impressed by what made a good book-how you needed to have a sensible story, a plot that developed, with a beginning, a middle, and an end that would tie everything together.

That's how you get surprises, because what movies are all about is surprises.

Fiction demands structures and recognizable shapes. Big surprises only draw attention to the writer's hand.

I'm not a fan of endless mystery in storytelling - I like to know where the mythology's going; I like to get there in an exciting, fast-paced way - enough that there's a really clear, aggressive direction to where it's going, to pay off mystery and reward the audiences loyalty.

Sometimes television can just jump from one bit of plot to the next, and the words fill in the in-between.

It's always good to have a story arch.

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.

You just never know what the grand plan is on 'Dexter,' so I didn't know if I was going to make it to the next episode, let alone the next season!

To be completely honest, I just like whatever tells a good story. Put me in whatever setting, scenario, genre. If you're telling a good story, it's great and it's fun to get caught up in.

If you have a beautiful story, it has to have conflict. If you don't have conflict, it can't be a good story.

I'm just a sucker for a good script.