Melissa Rosenberg Quotes

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

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.

It's often the case that the most strained moments in books are the very beginning and the very end - the getting in and the getting out. The ending, especially: it's awkward, as if the writer doesn't know when the book is over and nervously says it all again.

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.

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

You can read a dozen different textbooks or how-to manuals that will tell you the basic rules of what makes a story - a beginning, a middle, and an end.

The end of a story must be stronger rather than weaker than the beginning, since it is the end which contains the denouement or culmination and which will leave the strongest impression upon the reader.

All stories have a beginning, a middle and an ending, and if they're any good, the ending is a beginning.

What's important on a comedy show, or any show, is that some stories have to go somewhere. There have to be ends to the beginnings and middles you create. But sometimes it's like a way station on the highway, then the actual thing doesn't have to be this giant, climactic, life-changing, game-changing thing.

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.

But then of course you reach a point where you have to say, I've got to figure out how this book's going to end. Otherwise, you're going to write yourself into so many dead-ends.

The first act is the easiest to plot. The second act is always the hardest to plot. Generally a good, you know, sometimes the third act can be difficult because you can get into a rut in the third act - everybody runs to their Corvette, has a chase, and you catch the bad guy.

With a mini series you can give the story a proper sense of pacing, a proper sense of closure.

These days we're all hyper-aware of the canonical way in which stories are supposed to play out - people are taught all about three-act scripting and where to put the reversal and all of that - and I think we can do more interesting narratives.

The good ending dismisses us with a touch of ceremony and throws a backward light of significance over the story just read. It makes it, as they say, or unmakes it. A weak beginning is forgettable, but the end of a story bulks in the reader's mind like the giant foot in a foreshortened photograph.

More than working toward the book's climax, I work toward the denouement. As a reader and a writer, that's where I find the real satisfaction.

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

A brief short story may require only a few paragraphs after the climax. On the other hand, in his massive novel 'The World According to Garp,' John Irving's denouement consisted of 10 separate sections, each devoted to an individual character's fate and each almost a story in itself.

I guess I would say that most of what I've learned about storytelling derives from novels and short stories. I cannot think of a novel or story, or a novelist or story writer, who thinks in terms of three-act structure.

I can't say that the ending of a story is always the best part of the story, and yet there's sort of this implicit idea that the finale is somehow supposed to be the mind-blowing best episode of a show. The question is: Why is that? Why do people make that assumption?

It's a responsibility of the writer to get the reader out of the story somehow.

The most-asked question when someone describes a novel, movie or short story to a friend probably is, 'How does it end?' Endings carry tremendous weight with readers; if they don't like the ending, chances are they'll say they didn't like the work. Failed endings are also the most common problems editors have with submitted works.

Yeah, I don't necessarily like endings that contrive an artificial moment of completion.

There's a reason a happy ending is called an ending. The trick of a television storyteller is to find all the rivers and mountains and valleys on the way to that ending.

Resolution and conclusion are inherent in a plot-driven narrative.