Flann O'Brien Quotes

I like a good story well told. That is the reason I am sometimes forced to tell them myself.

Writing a TV show is totally different than writing features, or just, what I started doing is writing features. You write a little bit more organically. You start from the beginning to the end, beginning, middle and end.

The story was such that I couldn't make a graceful ending and then make a graceful new beginning. I could have, but I didn't want to. So, it isn't the most graceful way of writing a story. This new story is, I think, is pretty good stuff. I'm pleased with it anyway.

Well, if storytelling is important, then your narrative ability, or your ability to put into words or use what someone else has put into words effectively, is important too.

All of my books have an internal geometric shape, and once I've seen the shape, then the writing gets much faster and easier because I now do know where we're going, and I know what's motivating these people, why they were here, and therefore, I have some good idea how they got there, and so I can fill in the missing chunks somewhat more easily.

When you're telling a story, you've got to give details.

The inciting incident is how you get (characters) to do something. It's the doorway through which they can't return, you know. The story takes care of the rest.

I feel like, if I'm being honest with myself, my biggest skill set is as a writer 'cause I can do that quickly and I'm really grounded in story structure. Part of my success as an actor, is that I know story well. Part of my success as a director, is how well I know story. Same thing, as a producer. It all begins and ends with me as a story creator. But, I love doing it all.

With a novel, you have to have a story. It's much more important to have it matter to the reader what happens to people, and it has to make sense and end in a way that is satisfying. So I spend a lot more time thinking about that. Then the writing itself usually is easier for me, because I know where it's going.

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

A good story needs only a good storyteller.

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

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

When you tell a story in the kitchen to a friend, it's full of mistakes and repetitions. It's good to avoid that in literature, but still, a story should feel like a conversation. It's not a lecture.

Even a dream as inspiration doesn't mean anything unless you then find that it's sparked an actual story with a plot.

Storytelling comes naturally to humans, but since we live in an unnatural world, we sometimes need a little help doing what we'd naturally do.

Stories worked much the same way . . . A false note at the beginning was much more costly than one nearer the end because early errors were part of the foundation.

The most important thing to realize is that everyone is capable of telling a story.

My greatest strength as a writer is that I'm a storyteller. But, it was a long, hard struggle for me to make the transition from verbally telling stories to writing them. You'll note I don't dwell on descriptions in my writing, because I'm far more interested in telling the story. There are many better writers in this world, but you'd be hard pressed to find anyone more passionate about stories than I am.

Some artists, such as Jack Kirby, need no plot at all. I mean I'll just say to Jack, "Let's let the next villain be Dr. Doom" ... or I may not even say that. He may tell me. And then he goes home and does it. He's so good at plots, I'm sure he's a thousand times better than I. He just makes up the plots for these stories. All I do is a little editing ... I may tell him that he's gone too far in one direction or another. Of course, occasionally I'll give him a plot, but we're practically both the writers on the things.

What I like is not a particular genre, it's storytelling. There's a lot of great storytelling in jazz, and in folk and in country music.

I always thought storytelling was like juggling [...] You keep a lot of different tales in the air, and juggle them up and down, and if you're good you don't drop any.

Printed prose is historically a most peculiar, almost an aberrant way of telling stories, and by far the most inherently anesthetic: It is the only medium of art I can think of which appeals directly to none of our five senses. The oral and folk tradition in narrative made use of verse or live-voice dynamics, embellished by gesture and expression--a kind of rudimentary theater--as do the best raconteurs of all times. Commonly there was musical accompaniment as well: a kind of one-man theater-of-mixed-means.

Once I start work on a project, I don’t stop and I don’t slow down unless I absolutely have to. If I don’t write every day, the characters begin to stale off in my mind – they begin to seem like characters instead of real people. The tale’s narrative cutting edge starts to rust and I begin to lose my hold on the story’s plot and pace. Worst of all, the excitement of spinning something new begins to fade. The work starts to feel like work, and for most writers that is the smooch of death.

The big nut to crack is to how to tell a story, what’s the right way to tell a particular story.