Erica Durance Quotes

As writers, we must keep throwing problems at our characters. Conflict is the heart of good storytelling. Hiking in nature along a twisting trail can remind us what a good story feels like. It's the opposite of a treadmill - or an interstate highway.

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

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

The conventional Aristotelian plot proceeds by means of a protagonist, an antagonist, and a series of events comprising a rising action, climax and denouement.

I'm one of those people who think that stories should have a beginning, a middle and an end, and then they're over, and then you tell the next story.

The author always knows more than the reader does at the start of a novel, and gradually, they share that knowledge with the reader - that's storytelling.

It's always easiest for me as a writer if I know I have a great ending. It can make everything else work. If you don't have a good ending, it's the hardest things in the world to come up with one. I always loved the ending of 'The Kite Runner,' and the scenes that are most faithful to the book are the last few scenes.

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

Eventually, after the hero and heroine, it is the antagonist who comes with the most anticipation in any film.

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.

If significant amounts of time go by without suspenseful action - which is often most powerfully motivated by backstory - the story loses momentum, and readers lose interest.

The story always leads you where it's supposed to go.

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.

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.

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.

The suspense of a novel is not only in the reader, but in the novelist, who is intensely curious about what will happen to the hero.

Characters who are on screen from start to finish are not necessarily the ones who have the greatest impact.

Unless the story line carries the scenes, the scenes don't really mean anything.

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

The villain drives the plot.

My conception of it was that in a normal film you have a story with different movements that program, develop, go a little bit off the trunk, come back, and end.

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.

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.