Erin Morgenstern Quotes

Don't mistake a good setup for a satisfying conclusion - many beginning writers end their stories when the real story is just ready to begin.

Plot is what happens in your story. Every story needs structure, just as every body needs a skeleton. It is how you 'flesh out and clothe' your structure that makes each story unique.

I think that three-act fundamentalism in film culture is a problem sometimes, because it's almost too obvious, or it's too expected. And it's not the only way to fill two hours, or to phrase things, or to order thoughts, or order ideas.

I seem to have a talent for writing endings that seem just right to me but that frustrate other people.

My books are written with a strong chronological spine.

I don't purposely push the boundaries... I think if you pay attention to a story, it will have exactly as much 'difficult material' as it needs, and nobody will complain about it because you've earnt it.

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.

I've been a radio reporter for ten years, and if I learned anything from my time at 'This American Life,' it's how to craft a narrative so that even if the ending is ambiguous, it is somehow satisfying.

It's nice to know when you're a part of a story, it's nice to know at least something about the beginning, middle, and end.

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

And I don't want to begin something, I don't want to write that first sentence until all the important connections in the novel are known to me. As if the story has already taken place, and it's my responsibility to put it in the right order to tell it to you.

When I teach sketch writing, there's still a beginning, middle and end.

A story really isn't truly a story until it reaches its climax and conclusion.

The great thing about a trilogy is that it feels like you've got a beginning, a middle, and an end.

As I work, I see my writing - each scene, each chapter, each section, each book - in three-act structures and classic myths, and I analyze them through the handy filter of the detective story.

I think it's much more natural as a writer to want to tell one story rather than lots of small stories that are half an hour long.

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.

Usually when I read something, first of all I'm looking for the story and then when I reread it, I'm sort of checking every part of it to see if every scene is necessary.

The point about a great story is that it's got a beginning, a middle and end.

I think stories do have an ending. I think they need to have an ending eventually because that is a story: a beginning, middle and end. If you draw out the end too long, I think storytelling can get tired.

I look for two things when I am about to launch into a book. First, there has to be a dramatic arc to the story itself that will carry me, and the reader, from beginning to end. Second, the story has to weave through larger themes that can illuminate the world of the subject.

The script of 'Shogun' was so tight that you could not take a word out of a sentence, you could not take a sentence out of a scene, and you certainly couldn't take out a scene without putting ripples right through the back or the front of the overall story.

I love the three-act theory. It works and works beautifully. But you don't necessarily have to structure a story that way: Cortazar and Borges wrote in different structural styles.

I believe in three-act structure. When I say that to novel people, or people in the world of books, they go, 'Well, that's a film thing.' However, even a good joke has three acts.

I'm one of those people who think that stories should have a beginning, a middle and an end, and then they're over, and then you tell the next story.