Guillermo Cabrera Infante Quotes

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

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.

I have a plot, but not much happens.

It's always good to have a story arch.

The mystery form was very helpful for me as a beginning writer because mystery novels and suspense novels have a beginning, a middle and an end.

If your characters are two-dimensional and your plot uncompelling, it won't matter how incredibly detailed and believable your fantasy world might be.

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.

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.

I began to be impressed by what made a good book-how you needed to have a sensible story, a plot that developed, with a beginning, a middle, and an end that would tie everything together.

A subplot is a distinguishing characteristic of the novel; the short story, for example, does not need subplots.

The main thing for me is I really like strong endings. If there's a strong ending, you can take more time in the beginning, your first act can be really quite different.

Essentially and most simply put, plot is what the characters do to deal with the situation they are in. It is a logical sequence of events that grow from an initial incident that alters the status quo of the characters.

My advice to aspiring writers of fantasy trilogies or series is that each book needs two main plots. There's the 'big story', the over-arching grand plot of the entire series, and there is the complete-in-itself, one-book plot.

Short-story writing requires an exquisite sense of balance. Novelists, frankly, can get away with more. A novel can have a dull spot or two, because the reader has made a different commitment.

In each scene, the writer sets up a situation, which brings a conflict as well as either a small victory or a loss at the close of that particular scene.

I don't really look for a script and go, 'I need to do a thriller, so I'm going to do this.' I just read scripts and look for the best possible story.

I think predictability is built into any good novel in some way - you begin reading Anna Karenina and you know pretty much what's going to happen at the end. But that doesn't mean you know what's going to happen in the middle. For me, it's that sense of what happens in the middle that's important.

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.

It's a cliche, and in a way it's a conservative idea about fiction, but I did learn the hard way that plot does need to dictate the story.

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.

Traditional fiction has a little bit of spatial exploration but is basically a question of time - the question is, what happens next?

I love writing two narratives! I think concurrent storylines are my favorite way to write a book.

I think screenwriting gave me more of an affinity for plot - my first novel, 'Me and Earl and the Dying Girl,' doesn't have a very sophisticated roadmap. But screenwriting required me to learn a higher level of plottiness, and I tried to bring that to 'The Haters.'

Sometimes, I have themes that interest me or that touch on larger issues but, really, I'm just trying to figure out the plot, or how the characters work. I'm trying to make the best story I possibly can.

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