Sergio Aragones Quotes

What keeps readers turning pages is suspense, which you can create using a variety of techniques, including tension, pacing and foreshadowing.

Suspense arises naturally from good writing - it's not a spice to be added separately.

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.

Why, for example, do the great writers use anticipation instead of surprise? Because surprise is merely an instrument of the unusual, whereas anticipation of a consequence enlarges our understanding of what is happening.

We want a story that starts out with an earthquake and works its way up to a climax.

Beginnings and endings are not interesting; audiences want the high point, which means you've got to get to it and get to it now - get the gun out fast, the clothes off quick.

With thrillers, I tend to concentrate on the research and pace more than the characters.

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.

In a novel you have to resist the urge to tell everything.

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

In plotting a book, my goal is to raise the stakes for the characters and, in so doing, keep the reader mesmerized.

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.

We like drama. Even in our comedy, we like drama.

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

The way to write a thriller is to ask a question at the beginning, and answer it at the end.

I think that even if you're wondering if two characters are ever going to kiss, drawing out the inevitability is part of the fun. Whatever the genre happens to be.

The way I express ideas is through the plot, Suspense is an important part of expressing an idea.

Even if your novel occurs in an unfamiliar setting in which all the customs and surroundings will seem strange to your reader, it's still better to start with action. The reason for this is simple. If the reader wanted an explanation of milieu, he would read nonfiction. He doesn't want information. He wants a story.

You run the risk, whenever you build your story around a central mystery, of either letting it go too long, or revealing it too soon and then taking the wind out of the sails of the narrative.

You can have the greatest characters in the world and write beautifully, but if nothing's happening, the story falls on its face pretty quickly.

I would say that all short stories have mystery naturally built into them.

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.

Every story needs an element of suspense - or it's lousy.

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

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