Karen Abbott Quotes

If you're telling a story it's always best not to play the ending.

I get to show the reader the essence of the book without giving anything away.

That's the mark of a great storyteller, never to give away secrets in advance.

Probably a good idea, let me know how it ends" "I already know how it ends" "You read the ending first?" "I always read the ending before I commit to the whole book." "If you know how it ends, why read the book?" "I don't read for the ending. I read for the story".

Human beings love stories because they safely show us beginnings, middles and ends.

I want the reader to turn the page and keep on turning until the end.

You run the risk, whenever you build your story around a central mystery, of either letting it go too long, or revealing it too soon and then taking the wind out of the sails of the narrative.

I like the way Wiseman builds a story in an unconventional way.

I think a biography is only as interesting as the lives and times it illuminates.

As a viewer, I never want any movie ruined for me, no matter what the genre is.

The audience wants to be attracted not by the critics, but by a great story. You must deliver to the audience emotion - and when I say emotion, I mean suspense, drama, love.

One feels the excitement of hearing an untold story.

We are all like Scheherazade's husband, in that we want to know what happens next.

Suspense is my thing. I think I am able to make people want to keep turning pages. They want to know what happens.

The fact is fiction is always a representation of life, sometimes the lives of famous people.

People talk about the plots and what happened, and they see your tricks a mile away.

I hate prologues because they're kind of gimmicks to suck you in.

To me, there's still nothing more thrilling than, every week, people getting to see another chapter in this story that you're telling.

Whether it's 'The West Wing' or anything else, my first thought is always, 'What's a good story?'

What keeps readers turning pages is suspense, which you can create using a variety of techniques, including tension, pacing and foreshadowing.

If you can't figure out how to make the beginning of your book compelling, you're probably not writing a compelling book.

You know, things that might work in a book just do not work in the visual medium of movies.

Cliffhangers are a lot of fun, but I think they can be easily abused if you're not careful.

I feel like with a movie you know your whole journey, and even though little minutiae might change, you're able to get a better idea of where you're going, whereas TV is engaging a different side of your brain.

I think to truly not know what to expect out of the story - to create a world where nothing is guaranteed - is sort of the backbone of 'Atlanta.'