Eudora Welty Quotes

Because I come from the theater, I use the images of the theater and of movies a great deal when I write. I see the story in my head. I have to break down the outline of a story first. I have to know where I'm going. Usually I have a good beginning and a good ending, and then I think, "Now I have to find my way through it."

Every story teaches me how to write it. Unfortunately, it doesn't teach me how to write the next one.

Stop trying to write sentences and start trying to write stories.

I learned to separate the story from the writing, probably the most important thing that any storyteller has to learn-that there are a thousand right ways to tell a story, and ten million wrong ones, and you're a lot more likely to find one of the latter than the former your first time through the tale.

Every time you finish something ... you figure you've finally learned to write, right? Then you start something else and it turns out you haven't. You have learned how to write that story, or that book, but you haven't learned how to write the next one.

I always describe writing a story as throwing bowling pins in the air and then catching them.

I've never invested myself properly in trying to write stories. When I write lyrics, mostly I write each sentence separately on an index card and then I lay them out and I just mix them up.

Each story tells me how to write it, but not the one afterwards.

I discovered John Truby ten years ago when a friend told me about his screenwriting course. I studied Truby's principles for a year and -- using them -- I wrote the first draft of The Thieves of Ostia in two weeks. I go back to his teachings before each new book I write. Each time I study Truby, I learn something new.

I have written a great many stories and I still don't know how to go about it except to write it and take my chances.

So in the first draft, I'm inventing people and place with a broad schematic idea of what's going to happen. In the process, of course, I discover all sorts of bigger and more substantial things.

I love storytelling so for me to get behind a story and get in there early in its infancy and kind of develop it in the early stages was something I really wanted to be a part of.

People who actually tell stories, meaning people who write novels and make feature films, don't see themselves as storytellers.

Writing 'when you find me,' it really exposed me to a way of putting together a story I hadn't thought of.

Every day, I learn something new. I think one of the most exciting things for a writer is to work on a TV show. It's like a novel. You have a really long time to develop and learn about the characters, and you can just really keep digging in deeper, every week.

I don't really have a drive toward being a director at all. Not that I wouldn't rule it out, but I just don't think my instincts lie necessarily in a very visual way. But I am very interested in storytelling, narrative and character development, so writing is something that I absolutely want to do.

One of the reasons I started working at 'South Park,' actually, was that I wanted to learn how to structure things and how to tell a story.

I never know, when I start writing a story, what's going to happen, or how it will all get sorted out.

Sometimes, in certain stories, I think we know at the outset essentially what the tone is going to be, or it becomes important that we're groping toward some kind of story with a certain kind of tone that we both get somehow. But I don't think how that's combined with other elements is ever in any way overtly discussed.

'Scalped' No. 1 was only the third comic script I'd ever written. I really learned a lot about writing on the fly with that series.

I love the idea of directing, I'm not confident enough, but I'm more confident in, well, I'd love to write. I've sort of written my whole life and I think I have a knack for it, so I'd like to write something and see what people think and that would be my first step to directing.

When you do enough research, the story almost writes itself. Lines of development spring loose and you'll have choices galore.

If nobody is looking for a story, and I have no reason to write a story, I would really much rather to do anything else because it's no fun writing stories, particularly not for me. I just do it in order to sell them and make a couple of bucks.

When I start to write, I see my stories as a kind of movie. For instance, I ask myself, "What kind of opening do I want for this book?"

What you're normally doing as a writer is trying to find the narrative.