Ron Carlson Quotes

Strangely enough, the first character in Fried Green Tomatoes was the cafe, and the town. I think a place can be as much a character in a novel as the people.

I think a setting is hugely important. I look at setting as a character with its own look, sound, history, quirks, goofy temperaments and moods.

If you ask me, the place that a story happens is as equal character. It's almost like an ecological viewpoint: These people are living in this piece of land, and in this piece of land in this time this is possible. For me, I almost think location first. It's time first - what year is it - then where are we, and then who is in it.

Setting is my primary joy as a writer, building a world and watching people respond to it.

A good scenario doesn't make a good science fiction story - but it's a setting within which a good science fiction story might be told.

An author knows his landscape best; he can stand around, smell the wind, get a feel for his place.

Choosing location is integral to the film: in essence, another character.

I always try to make the setting fit the story I have in mind.

When I wrote my fictional novels, they always had a starting point of something real. Those images that are not real are exactly the same strength and power of the real ones, and the line between them is completely blurred.

I would say 'Flower' had a story. It is told through the environment.

My songs don't deal with locations that specifically, even if there are very specific references to them in there; they're sort of just where stories happen, not the stories themselves.

Notice how every science fiction movie or television show starts with a shot of the location where the story is about to occur. Movies that take place in outer space always start with a shot of stars and a starship. Movies that take place on another world always start with a shot of that planet. This is to let you know where you are. Novels and stories start the same way. You have to give the reader a sense of where he is and what's happening as quickly as possible. You don't want to start the story by confusing the reader.

Every story would be another story, and unrecognizable if it took up its characters and plot and happened somewhere else ... Fiction depends for its life on place. Place is the crossroads of circumstance, the proving ground of, What happened? Who's here? Who's coming?

I have a very acute sense of place and time, so all of my stories are rooted in a place and a time.

I feel like my brain is more geared towards a novel than it is to a movie.

I'll take a certain concern of my own or a situation and try to frame it around a fictional story, but sometimes just straight-up autobiographical songs work well, and sometimes a story is better. I like stories. I like to hear them. I don't think there are enough of them in songs anymore.

I think almost always that what gets me going with a story is the atmosphere, the visual imagery, and then I people it with characters, not the other way around.

A lot of writing is a form of seeing - putting down what you see in terms of action and landscape.

A sense of place is very important in writing.

Though it may not seem like it, I never try to write about a place, per se; it's always, first and last, about story. Story is everything. Story and a bit of attitude.

You can really help support a character if you understand the setting. So for that reason I generally write about Philadelphia.

I wrote my first short story in third grade.

Everyone seems quite good at stories and making them up.

As a writer, I'm driven by settings. Others are driven by characters or predicaments, but with me, settings come first.

Till now I have never shot a scene without taking account of what stands behind the actors because the relationship between people and their surroundings is of prime importance.