Rachel Kushner Quotes

When you learn about stories in school, you get it backward. You start to think 'Oh, the reason these things are in stories is because a book said I need to put these things in there.' You need a death, as my husband says, and you need a little sidekick with a saying like 'Skivel-dee-doo!'

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.

It's always good to have a story arch.

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.

The key is a good story. If you have a good story, you have enough emotional beats that you can hit.

I much prefer a plotted novel to a novel that is really conceptual.

That is what I define as a novel: something that has a beginning, a middle and an end, with characters and a plot that sustain interest from the first sentence to the last. But that is not what I do at all.

Titles are important; I have them before I have books that belong to them. I have last chapters in my mind before I see first chapters, too. I usually begin with endings, with a sense of aftermath, of dust settling, of epilogue.

The only thing I knew about novels from a technical point of view was that they should have conflict.

I care about narrative structure; I care about how stories unfold.

I think screenwriting gave me more of an affinity for plot - my first novel, 'Me and Earl and the Dying Girl,' doesn't have a very sophisticated roadmap. But screenwriting required me to learn a higher level of plottiness, and I tried to bring that to 'The Haters.'

I don't like plots. I don't know what a plot means. I can't stand the idea of anything that starts in the beginning - you know, 'beginning, middle and end.'

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.

I began to be impressed by what made a good book-how you needed to have a sensible story, a plot that developed, with a beginning, a middle, and an end that would tie everything together.

Stories of all lengths and depths come from different parts of the cave. For a novel, you must lay in mental, physical and spiritual provision as for a siege or for a time of hectic explosions, while a short story is, or can be, a steady, timed flame like the lighting of a blow lamp on a building site full of dry tinder.

I went to a seminar early in my career on the craft of storytelling by Robert McKee. It was really life altering. There are basic principles on how to craft an engaging story and he covers them well. He's got a book out, 'Story,' that I would highly recommend to anyone interested in improve their storytelling.

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.

The main thing for me is I really like strong endings. If there's a strong ending, you can take more time in the beginning, your first act can be really quite different.

Essentially and most simply put, plot is what the characters do to deal with the situation they are in. It is a logical sequence of events that grow from an initial incident that alters the status quo of the characters.

I want to tell a story and shape it all the way through to the end.

I have a plot, but not much happens.

Short-story writing requires an exquisite sense of balance. Novelists, frankly, can get away with more. A novel can have a dull spot or two, because the reader has made a different commitment.

In the writing of novels, there is the problem of how to shape a narrative.

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 predictability is built into any good novel in some way - you begin reading Anna Karenina and you know pretty much what's going to happen at the end. But that doesn't mean you know what's going to happen in the middle. For me, it's that sense of what happens in the middle that's important.