Brian K. Vaughan Quotes

I make extensive outlines before I write a book. I usually know what will happen. I know the characters, and I know what they are about.

If I can tell you the story from beginning to end in five minutes, I'm ready to start writing.

The hardest part about storytelling is knowing what happens in the end.

I write any sort of rubbish which will cover the main outlines of the story, then I can begin to see it.

I never start a section of the story without knowing how it will end. I also consciously try to shape the story as though it were a movie.

I don't see how anybody starts a novel without knowing how it's going to end. I usually make detailed outlines: how many chapters it will be and so forth.

I am a writer who works from an outline. What I generally do when I build an outline is I find focal, important scenes, and I build them in my head and I don't write them yet, but I build towards them.

I've always known when I start a story what the last line is. It's always been the case, since the first story I ever wrote. I don't know how it's going to get there, but I seem to need the destination. I need to know where I end up. It never changes, ever.

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.

When I'm putting a story together, I generally know the ending and a couple of the points halfway through, and I've got sort of an idea about the beginning, and although I do write the story one sentence at a time, when I'm thinking it up, I'm thinking it up all at once.

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

My forte is the plotting. You sit down, and you work out a plot.

I won't usually just sit down to write. I'd have done it in my head already. I visualise a story just like a film strip running in my head. I guess that is also a reason why my books have such a visual element to them. And it's what I tell young writers: plan your story ahead.

I knew the beginning and the end – I just had to dream up a convincing middle.

The older I get and the more fiction I write, the more I outline, the more I think about plot before I dive in and plunge too far.

I consider a story merely as a frame on which to stretch my materials.

Writing a short story is a little like walking into a dark room, finding a light and turning it on. The light is the end of the story.

Do not start a story unless you have an ending in mind. You can change the story's ending if you wish, but you should always have a destination.

Stories work, if they have a beginning, middle and end.

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

To come up with the ending to a story and then work backwards is like tying your shoe with one hand only.

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.

When I first began to have the initial idea for 'Heartsease,' I just wrote a skeleton story; that is, I started her off as this young, bright 16-year-old and then added the events that occurred and where she and other characters fitted in, even writing 3 different endings, as I was not sure where Mary's story would lead to.

I don't ever want to impose something on the story. I want the story to tell me.

There's an outline for each of the books that I adhere to pretty closely, but I'm not averse to taking it in a new direction, as long as I can get it back to where I need it to go.