Penelope Lively Quotes

I spent ages figuring out things like viewpoint, how you tell the story, and so on.

I want to present interesting stories that don't qualify themselves just by virtue of their ethnographic type.

I always start with characters rather than with a plot, which many critics would say is very obvious from the lack of plot in my films - although I think they do have plots - but the plot is not of primary importance to me, the characters are.

I think all good short stories are about what it means to tell a good story.

Whatever the case, oftentimes, for a story to feel complete to me, I need more than one point of view.

I name the genre that I write in as 'novel of voices.'

It's also possible to have two third person singular points of view, as represented by two characters through whose eyes the story is told in alternating chapters, say.

You never want to be in a position where your reader feels like you're passing judgment on your own characters. Any novel where you feel like the author is talking to the reader over the characters' heads is in a bad place.

I love writing letters. In order to write a novel in first person, I think I needed an addressee.

In prose, leaps of logic can be made while the protagonist thinks about things and arrives at conclusions. Even with voiceover, there's no real way of having an inner voice without it taking over the entire story.

I definitely feel that plot flows from character. I don't believe that you can construct a plot and insert people into it.

I'm not a purist - I like films that are narrated and films that aren't, films that are beautiful and films that are clumsy but heartfelt. Mostly, I just like a good story and good characters.

I don't start with the characters. I start with the series of events that will provide the conflict and how it can be resolved. Characters are incidental.

The shows I've been working on, especially 'Parenthood' and 'Friday Night Lights,' I think are completely character-driven stories. I think, for most writers, that's a privilege to be telling those kinds of stories. It's erroneous to me.

When it comes to the form the narrative will take, whether first person, third person, or Aunt Grace's cat, I usually find that the story tells me which voice it prefers, and that often changes as I go along. And in the end it really doesn't matter as long as the author can rig those voices all in harness to pull the same load.

I've always enjoyed that kind of thing - thinking about the production of narrative and why it is that when we read a novel, we don't notice the fact that someone who might be very close-mouthed or tight-lipped is perfectly willing to tell us a story in 600 or 700 pages.

What's great about 'Game of Thrones' is they change the perspective, the POV, all the time. So you will have one story told by one character and you'll go, 'Oh my God, horrible', and then maybe the season after you have the same story told but from the person you thought was just the most horrible, vile creature.

Some novels present a story form many points of view. Most movies tell only one person's side of the story. Sometime it's easy to use the strongest point of view, or find the character with the most dramatic experience. It depends on which themes the scriptwriter wants to explore.

I can't really write anything without knowing the ending. I don't know how people do that. Even with my superhero stuff, I have to know at least where I want to take the characters and what the ending of my story with them will be. I just can't structure stories or character arcs and stuff without knowing the endpoint.

I much prefer a plotted novel to a novel that is really conceptual.

My stories are character driven.

First person narrative is a very effective tool but you have to know as a writer how to make it work.

First-person narrators is the way I know how to write a book with the greatest power and chance of artistic success.

I care about narrative structure; I care about how stories unfold.

For me, 'The Hobbit' is an object lesson in storytelling, both in terms of characterization and story structure. It is an exemplar of storytelling in that regard.