Glen Duncan Quotes

In older science fiction stories, they had to rely on storytelling as opposed to spectacle. The old run of the 'Twilight Zone,' the star was the writing and the storytelling, and the characters and the twists and the cleverness in the setup and payoff and execution.

The luxury we have when we do a series is that we go through a long journey, and it keeps a lot of information and things to be revealed.

Normally, in a film with lots of twists and turns, half of them don't make sense; they're just there for their own sakes.

My life has been a whole series of accidents, some of them happy, some not.

Suspense films are often based on communication problems, and that affects all of the plot points. It almost gives it kind of a fable feeling.

A book sometimes seems to impose a through-line to life that real life doesn't actually have.

That's the way life is: meaning is always there, but there is no clearly given way of decoding it. Conventional cinema obscures this with an easy reduction of meaning to plot and schematic characters.

I'm very good at plot.

What I always got excited about with 'Arrested Development' was the element of surprise.

All we think about is how to keep the audience engaged, and normally we're big on plot because that's the easy way to do it.

Life is not what you expect: it is made up of the most unexpected twists and turns.

The thing about Drew Goddard and Mike Schur is that they are legit geniuses, and they love storytelling. They love creating worlds, love messing with the audience; they love doing things that we don't expect. To get to be a part of that is too good to be true.

I usually have a sense of where my characters are personally and ways in which they might transform throughout the novel. But I never know at the outset how the book will end, nor do I ever stick to my original plan.

Plot is a literary convention. Story is a force of nature.

The best parts of any story to me are the unexpected things.

So much for endings. Beginnings are always more fun. True connoisseurs, however, are known to favor the stretch in between, since it's the hardest to do anything with. That's about all that can be said for plots, which anyway are just one thing after another, a what and a what and a what.

What unlooked-for things do happen, to be sure, in a long life!

With a lot of songs on this record, one verse doesn't relate to the next verse. I don't think that one day really relates to the next day in life.

It is never quite safe to think we have done with life. When we imagine we have finished our story fate has a trick of turning the page and showing us yet another chapter.

Plots are ... what the writer sees with.

As regards plot I find real life no help at all. Real life seems to have no plots. And as I think a plot desirable and almost necessary, I have this extra grudge against life.

And if Hollywood has taught us anything, it's that cool props and special effects are not enough. Story comes first. Everything depends on story.

I'm more interested in plot than theme, but I hope my values find their way into my stories: kindness, sympathy, effort, and humor!

The plot! The plot! What kind of plot could a poet possibly provide that is not surpassed by the thinking, feeling reader? Form alone is divine.

Don’t sit down in the middle of the woods. If you’re lost in the plot or blocked, retrace your steps to where you went wrong. Then take the other road. And/or change the person. Change the tense. Change the opening page.