Barbara Kingsolver Quotes

I love sentences. I love characters. But most of all, perhaps, I love to work on plot, and that may be where my natural gifts lie, if I have any. I like to think hard about plots in TV shows and films.

I begin by assembling notes on characters. Large swaths of the plot become clear to me as I do this.

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.

Personally, one of the most helpful things I learned was three-act structure. For my first four or so novels, I built the structure intuitively.

Axiom : Novel must have either one living character or a perfect pattern: fails otherwise.

When you get ready to write your novel, outline it first. There's nothing worse than getting halfway through and realizing you've painted yourself in a plot corner.

The video game story-development process is incredibly broken.

But then of course you reach a point where you have to say, I've got to figure out how this book's going to end. Otherwise, you're going to write yourself into so many dead-ends.

I always think plot is what you fall back on if you can't write, to keep things going.

Some writers can produce marvelous plots without planning it out, but I can't. In particular I need to know the structure of a novel: what's going to happen in each chapter and each scene.

If you're writing a screenplay from scratch, it involves a lot of creation.

I binge write, basically. I do a lot of prep, research, setup. I'll have a pretty detailed outline. Sort of like a beat outline. And then I'll add little notes and dialogue ideas, and I'll just create a 20-page document.

The most challenging and exciting aspect is the outline and formation of the plot points. This is the stage where the notion of the story begins to take shape, and I can see glimpses of what is to come.

My outlines can be 10-20 pages in length and focus primarily on the physical active plot over the emotional plot.

Normally I start with a plot, and write a synopsis, and the ideas come from the construction.

Writing is truly a creative art - putting word to a blank piece of paper and ending up with a full-fledged story rife with character and plot.

If you don't generate tension in the film to begin with... you can't really make a purse out of a sow's ear, you know.

The first is that instead of writing a sequel, which is what most people do, this is in fact a prequel. Although we didn't know that when we began the process.

You can't write just anything. Your story needs structure.

I never outline my novels before I write. I do have a vague sense of beginning, middle, and end at the outset of each book, but for me, writing has always been a very character-driven process.

First and foremost, it's got to be on the page. It starts with the writing.

I write where I can see things happen, and then things get glued together. I do have the final scene, but that really is an epilogue. It's not part of the plot.

Matthew Wiener on 'Mad Men' writes the entire series before they start shooting, and if you have that, then what you can do with character and story is not at all unlike what you can do in a novel.

BoJack' is a very much a format-based show. The story should always match the format, but I don't necessarily think the story has to come first.

I don't just look at things as an actor. I've also written several films, so I look at it as a storyteller and I know if something worked and should have been in there for the benefit of the story and the benefit of the character.