Chris Abani Quotes

What makes a story a story is that something changes. Internal, external, small or large, trivial or of earth-shattering importance. Doesn't matter.

And almost always there has to be change, change in the characters is the journey - it's the story.

Every creative story is different. And yet every creative story is the same: There was nothing, now there is something. It's almost like magic.

I look for roles that allow me to immerse in different worlds, immerse in worlds that are different from mine. Then, when you finish a film, you're a different person. I look for that. I look to be impacted, to be transformed, changed by my roles. That's why I do this.

All stories are just stories of a character changing.

I'd said no to directing 'Snowtown' a few times and was quite scared of it, but I saw a story there that was worth telling.

I'm always interested in characters who are closed down, but who open up when they choose to, rather than when they're obliged to. I think that's a very appealing thing, for an audience and just in life. I like the idea that something will say nothing, and then get straight to the point. That feels like how your heroes should be.

And loss of control is always the source of fear. It is also, however, always the source of change.

As a character, it's very interesting to play someone who wants to change their life and have him change it.

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.

In the instant before the door opened, I could almost sense my life expanding just like a river whose waters have begun to swell; for I had never before taken such a drastic step to change the course of my own future. I was like a child tiptoeing along a precipice overlooking the sea. And yet somehow I hadn't imagined a great wave might come and strike me there, and wash everything away.

And it was always the stories that needed the telling that gave us the rope we could cross any river with. They balanced us high above any crevasse. They made us be natural acrobats. They made us brave. They met us well. They changed us. It was in their nature to.

Get to know your characters as well as you can let there be something at stake, and then let the chips fall where they may.

To me good storytelling is about journeys. It's about people's journeys, people's discoveries and how they deal with those discoveries; circumstances that put people in different situations.

A story only matters, I suspect, to the extent that the people in the story change.

I think the good stories are those where the character decides to break away and do something different.

There is, in fact, not much point in writing a novel unless you can show the possibility of moral transformation, or an increase in wisdom, operating in your chief character or characters. Even trashy bestsellers show people changing. When a fictional work fails to show change, when it merely indicates that human character is set, stony, unregenerable, then you are out of field of the novel and into that of the fable or the allegory. - from the introduction of the 1986 Norton edition

Just that maybe … maybe you don’t want to change the story, because you don’t know what a different ending holds.

The secret to all drama, film, TV, or books - the thing that people respond to most, and the thing I find myself as a viewer feeling most interested in, is the idea of change.

If there is no possibility for change in a character, we have no interest in him.

A good story is always a journey. It is about taking the journey, the people the hero meets along the way and how they change him or her. All stories are journeys. They don't have to be shocking or outrageous: they simply have to be interesting.

Robert McKee says humans naturally seek comfort and stability. Without an inciting incident that disrupts their comfort, they won’t enter into a story. They have to get fired from their job or be forced to sign up for a marathon. A ring has to be purchased. A home has to be sold. The character has to jump into the story, into the discomfort and the fear, otherwise the story will never happen.

Vulnerability is the birthplace of innovation, creativity and change.

Dialogue is character and character is plot.

The poets needed to learn to pay greater attention to character and to narrative.