Stephen Graham Jones Quotes

Good stories are driven by conflict, tension, and high stakes.

The most important thing for me in an action sequence is, you understand the characters' intention and the challenges the characters are going to have to face: what the character story is within the action sequence.

For success, the author must make the reader care about the destiny of the principals, and sustain this anxiety, or suspense, for about 100,000 words.

In plotting a book, my goal is to raise the stakes for the characters and, in so doing, keep the reader mesmerized.

An action movie should, like any other, follow the narrative traditions of literature. That means there should be subtlety, a slow build and a gradual bringing together of all the separate threads of the plot. To see all of it coming together slowly is very rewarding for the audience.

Why, for example, do the great writers use anticipation instead of surprise? Because surprise is merely an instrument of the unusual, whereas anticipation of a consequence enlarges our understanding of what is happening.

The beginning of a plot is the prompting of desire.

Tension is the cornerstone of any good story.

I don't really look for a script and go, 'I need to do a thriller, so I'm going to do this.' I just read scripts and look for the best possible story.

I've always said I'm less interested in twists as I am about escalation.

I love the idea of stories being about great beginnings and terrible endings.

Beginnings and endings are not interesting; audiences want the high point, which means you've got to get to it and get to it now - get the gun out fast, the clothes off quick.

When you're telling taut, tight storytelling that has any kind of built-in plot twist elements, you tend to want to stack everything up on top of itself as opposed to letting things breathe and be languid in terms of the passage of time.

I find that most novels are not good all the way through. A story can be good all the way through, every sentence.

A compelling story requires conflict, friction, an obstacle to be overcome.

If your characters are two-dimensional and your plot uncompelling, it won't matter how incredibly detailed and believable your fantasy world might be.

I love a big, character-rich story with a dark heart, with a compelling mystery or some kind of ticking clock at its center. I want to be lured in by prose, captured by character, and bound by stellar plotting to keep turning the pages.

Here's what happens in a play. You get involved in a situation where something is unbalanced. If nothing's unbalanced, there's no reason to have a play. If Hamlet comes home from school, and his dad's not dead and asks him if he's had a good time, it's boring. But if something's unbalanced, it must be returned to order.

A novel requires a certain kind of world-building and also a certain kind of closure, ultimately. Whereas with a short story you have this sense that there are hinges that the reader doesn't see.

Without sounding too pretentious, I was sort of a slave to the narrative. When the narrative cracks in, I have to go where it takes me. I had to go to the Bohemian Grove. It was the obvious end to the book.

My writing has always been what you call 'narrative fiction' in the sense that it's got very strong plots and twists at the end.

The short story is a very natural mode of storytelling; most stories can be told quickly. I always think of them as like a tightrope walk - every sentence is a step along the rope, and you can so easily misplace your step and break your neck.

When you think of a great twist or a red herring or a way of misdirecting the reader, it is good, but you know that they are just tricks at the end of the day, and the way to keep interest is to write characters that people care about.

A subplot is a distinguishing characteristic of the novel; the short story, for example, does not need subplots.

In a novel you have to resist the urge to tell everything.