Paul S. Kemp Quotes

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

I'm big on story structure. I studied with John Truby, who mapped out story by means of moral wants and needs, and that's what I do. Hey, so does John Irving.

What I have in advance are people I want to write about and a problem or problems that I see those people encountering and that I want to explore - it all proceeds sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph, and scene by scene.

My only conclusion about structure is that nothing works if you don't have interesting characters and a good story to tell.

Sometimes, I have themes that interest me or that touch on larger issues but, really, I'm just trying to figure out the plot, or how the characters work. I'm trying to make the best story I possibly can.

No, you don't have to start your play with a premise. You can start with a character or an incident, or even a simple thought. This thought or incident grows, and the story slowly unfolds itself. You have time to find your premise in the mass of your material later. The important thing is to find it.

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.

It took me many years to figure out how to structure a compelling story.

A book begins with an image or character or situation that I care about deeply.

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.

In judging other people's work, particularly short stories, I have noticed how novice writers tell the readers everything about their characters in the first paragraphs, disclose their motives, reveal their recent activities and their future intentions.

I don't do issue writing. I do character writing.

Robert Bolt's storytelling is the kind that I grew up with and aspired to.

There are many oral historians in America, but my books are made using the rules of novel writing. I have a beginning, a plot, characters.

I think my sensibilities about storytelling and character just automatically come into play when I'm trying to work on any kind of narrative. For me, it doesn't really matter what the source of the narrative is. I will be looking for ways to make it into an intriguing story with empathetic characters.

You spend so much time as a writer telling straight and linear stories.

Stories matter to me. I look for a good script, story, and a strong part.

While problems in a film are fairly easy to identify, the sources of those problems are often extraordinarily difficult to assess. A mystifying plot twist or a less-than-credible change of heart in our main character is often caused by subtle underlying issues elsewhere in the story.

I could make up characters till the cows came home. Plot's what hard. Very hard.

You don't idea your way into a plot but plot your way into an idea.

I often attribute my screenwriting to journalism because they drill in the who, what, when, where and why - but we really need to land on that why. That's what I've been exploring in my writing for many years and trying to get better at.

The first lie of fiction is that the author gives some order to the chaos of life: chronological order, or whatever order the author chooses.

To combine telling an interesting story with brilliantly written characters is the most difficult thing to do.

A novel requires a certain kind of world-building and also a certain kind of closure, ultimately. Whereas with a short story you have this sense that there are hinges that the reader doesn't see.

I don't make unconventional stories; I don't make non-linear stories. I like linear storytelling a lot.