Maxine Hong Kingston Quotes

It's one thing to not want an evil-sorcerer type villain in your story, but it's another thing to avoid having any sort of antagonist at all. A story without an antagonist gets weird pretty quick.

You can't tell a good story without conflict - the story can't be beautiful or meaningful. We're taught to run from conflict, and it's robbing us of some really good stories.

I really think if you take away a character's obstacles then there's no comedy.

Character development is conflict.

I wanted to show those characters discovering it is possible to find common ground, as they make their way through a plotline that I hope is engrossing enough to keep the reader a willing participant.

Storytelling is storytelling. Good stories need compelling characters and interesting conflicts. That's the bottom line no matter what medium you're writing for.

The movies and TV shows I like to watch tend to put their characters in situations where they have to dig deeper.

I hate plots.

I think that internal conflict works very well, because, after all, all the best drama is fuelled by conflict.

We always try to go back to character: What do they want? What are they doing? What's in motion that they're dealing with? When things get particularly heavy, we will take a step back and look at who has some room to have some things lighter, funnier, or sweeter happen.

In the English books, the American kids' books, typically, there is a problem, the characters grapple with that problem, and the problem is resolved.

Meaningful stories have lots and lots of conflict. If we avoid conflict, our stories won't be meaningful.

To me, when you have people trying to put their best foot forward but facing conflict, that's when stories are the most interesting.

Have a short story feature two situations, and then let them solve each other.

People at a point of conflict are always the most interesting stories to tell.

Storytelling wise, you've gotta take it as far as you can possibly take it with each individual movie. If you're holding out something for a sequel or some cliff-hanger, that's not how I think of a satisfying story.

If you have no conflict, you have no story. That's number one. That's a rule of novels.

Good stories must travel through conflict. And in epic stories, the conflict must become unbearable.

The heart responds to the conflict within a story.

For me and my storytelling and the way that I embrace stories in the way that I embrace characters, I desperately needed to know that everything was okay.

I don't know who will overcome losses, some losses aren't meant to be overcome, but all losses make for good stories and good character development and all the jazz that makes a show compelling and watchable.

I find that in a novel I can get more of life, perhaps not such intense life, but certainly more of life than in poetry.

There are no new stories. It all depends on how you handle them. In romances the characters are going to fall in love with each other; you know that when you see the syrupy cover. It's how get there that's the fun.

The story [for the western genre] is everything. Whether it's a book or a screenplay, the story drives everything. And if you just go out and try to make one by putting on boots and jumping on a horse and riding off... If you don't have the material, the characters and the things to overcome and conflicts that give life to drama, you don't have it.

Drama is based on the Mistake.