Terry Pratchett Quotes

I try mainly to just focus on character and what my character's point of view is, with each person, and try to figure out story.

I'm always writing about character first. Plot, such as it is, comes from the characters.

There's nothing interesting about seeing our characters for an hour and a half do some flashy flying in the sky and beating up on some buildings. It's boring, and people don't want that anymore. They want character, and they want story.

Character is plot, plot is character.

The story is the only thing that's important. Everything else will take care of itself. It's like what bowlers say. You hear writers talk about character or theme or mood or mode or tense or person. But bowlers say, if you make the spares, the strikes will take care of themselves. If you can tell a story, everything else becomes possible. But without story, nothing is possible, because nobody wants to hear about your sensitive characters if there's nothing happening in the story. And the same is true with mood. Story is the only thing that's important.

Plot is no more than footprints left in the snow after your characters have run by on their way to incredible destinations.

Dialogue is character and character is plot.

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

Plot and character are virtually the same thing.

All fiction is about people, unless it's about rabbits pretending to be people. It's all essentially characters in action, which means characters moving through time and changes taking place, and that's what we call 'the plot'.

Whether you're writing a horror show or a James Bond film, I think what bubbles beneath is interesting characterization. The colors that emerge through storytelling is what a dramatist does. There's always got to be something bubbling underneath that will erupt at some point.

I'm all about the story. If I like the character and I think the story's entertaining, I'll do it.

The most important aspect of any story, to me, is character.

Whenever you can manoeuvre your characters into a situation where they both have a good argument to make, you're on the right track.

It's really about, oh come on, this guy wouldn't say that or he wouldn't do that, you know, it's about the characters, about the story, about the situation.

A story is built on characters and reasons.

In a story, you have to have a theme and an angle, you have to have a beginning, middle and an end. You have to have a defining moment and kick it to death. You gotta be able to recognize that, by the way. It probably takes experience.

With all of the qualities of the scene-setting, the dialogue, the place and time and the time and place in which your characters move. And I want to move with the characters, move with them and describe the world in which they are living.

If you do weave one-liners into a story, you have to have an overall story as well, otherwise it doesn't really count as narrative.

It's necessary to track characters all the way through an opera. If you're dealing with more than one or two characters, it's very easy to forget that the others have lives of their own that feed into the story.

Plots are artificial. Does your life have a plot? It has characters. There is a narrative. There's a lot of story, a lot of character. But plot? Eh, no.

A story isn't interesting unless a character has real challenges to deal with.

For me, any story I tackle begins with the human relationships and not the plot.

I have picked 'mainstream' films only because there is a story, and there are lovely people attached to it. That's a conscious decision always for me. What's the point if there is no story to tell?

The writing is only ever the attractive thing about a part. And also if all the elements within the writing come together - the character and the structure and the narrative - if they are all there then you become excited.