Steven Amsterdam Quotes

Listen to great storytellers; slowly, you will learn about voice, timing, tension, structure, climax - all the things you need to tell stories that will capture the imagination of your audience.

I want to tell a story and shape it all the way through to the end.

I find that most people know what a story is until they sit down to write one.

Obviously, for me, story is first and foremost, even in the face of the attractive idea of having all the cast there, or having a great piece of talent come to it.

You can read a dozen different textbooks or how-to manuals that will tell you the basic rules of what makes a story - a beginning, a middle, and an end.

The writing is only ever the attractive thing about a part. And also if all the elements within the writing come together - the character and the structure and the narrative - if they are all there then you become excited.

I like to tell stories that have beginnings, middles and ends.

Storytelling is about two things; it's about character and plot.

I always think plot is what you fall back on if you can't write, to keep things going.

I believe that the writer should tell a story. I believe in plot. I believe in creating characters and suspense.

The most important aspect of any story, to me, is character.

The villain drives the plot.

Events at home, at work, in the street - these are the bases for a story.

You cannot base a whole movie on just the imagery alone. It has to be the story and the characters.

I think a good story's a good story and a good character's a good character.

I love a really good storyline.

Our biggest challenge is always story. The story is the ultimate thing you try to tackle.

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 parallels between a stage and a book are compelling. You, like all authors, create 'characters' in a 'setting' who speak 'dialogue' encased in 'scenes.' Most importantly, you - like the playwright - have an 'audience.'

For me, the first thing is to tell a good story.

It's really, always, the story and the characters that come first, and the other things are kind of dealt with in time or, in fact, driven by the story.

I've always written about other artists, or I write my thoughts down, but I've never written a story.

A short story is one idea; a novel is a whole soup of them.

No matter what kind of writing you do, it's always the details that make the story.

A good story isn't preachy; a good story is always entertaining.