William Shatner Quotes

Any show I'm working on, I want the stories to always be about something, and to have the potential to be emotional. That's the kind of story that I like.

A strong story can move me to tears, and it doesn't matter whether it's a science-fiction or fantasy world. It's about what happens to a person, the choices they make. That's what's interesting.

The goal, I suppose, any fiction writer has, no matter what your subject, is to hit the human heart and the tear ducts and the nape of the neck and to make a person feel something about the characters are going through and to experience the moral paradoxes and struggles of being human.

I usually give a book 40 pages. If it doesn't grab me by then, adios. With young adult books, you can usually tell by Page 4 if it's worth the time. The author establishes the conflict early, sometimes in the first sentence. The themes of hope, family, friendship and overcoming hardship appeal to most everyone.

I tend not to know what the plot is or the story is or even the theme. Those things come later, for me.

Theme is great for people who like to approach stories that way, but it's an organizing principle that helps us write a story that has some weight; it's not something that all readers have to care about.

When you're writing a novel - at least the way I write is I work from what I would call 'emotional atmosphere,' ambiance to ambiance.

I don't think people are ever going to a place where they're like, 'I'm over stories about character and love.'

There is no better place to plot the death of a character than when you're miserable and working out.

The great thing about a short story is that it doesn't have to trawl through someone's whole life; it can come in glancingly from the side.

The idea behind a dish - the delight and the surprise - makes a difference. Great literature surprises and delights, and provokes us. It isn't just 'Here's the facts - boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl.' It's how you tell it.

As long as your storytelling and emotional depth are intact, that's what people will focus on.

I think my sensibilities about storytelling and character just automatically come into play when I'm trying to work on any kind of narrative. For me, it doesn't really matter what the source of the narrative is. I will be looking for ways to make it into an intriguing story with empathetic characters.

Stories matter to me. I look for a good script, story, and a strong part.

You can do all of the world-building you want; at the end of the day, what's important is the heart and the drive of the story and the heart and the drive of the characters.

In the 'Buffy' room, it was never about a plot twist, ever. It was always about, 'Tell the story, tell the characters, complicate their lives, make things get worse,' but we never worked backwards from the plot, and it was always a great lesson.

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.

A lot of the struggle I had with movies is I really loved moments and tones and feelings in a scene, and I loved creating those, but I never really had great stories to string them together.

I have always argued, in a good novel, interesting things happen to interesting people.

A short story is a shard, a sliver, a vignette. It's a biopsy on the human condition but it doesn't have this capacity to think autonomously for itself.

This is the story, this is your character, I have the sense of the landscape, I have the sense of the scene, I have all that stuff. But I'm also looking for something else to happen, an accident or something. You're focused on the story you intend to tell and then you have to have a peripheral net out to catch these accidents.

Basically, fiction is people. You can't write fiction about ideas.

If you create a good story that has a lot of story value... I think audiences like that. It's why they stick with the same TV show over and over.

As a novelist, I'm endlessly fascinated by human behavior and interactions.

If you know exactly what your character knows, it's a drama.