Tony DiTerlizzi Quotes

You don't idea your way into a plot but plot your way into an idea.

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.

Once you come up with a premise, you have to work out how it all happened. It's a bit like coming up with a spectacular roof design first. Before you can get it up there, you need to build a solid foundation and supporting structure.

Writing sketches, you're also learning about a journey and characters, and you translate that to bigger things.

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

I have the 'thing' worked out - the trick or the surprise or the pivotal fact. Then I just start somewhere and let the story work itself out.

This is absolutely the true answer, no word of a lie, 100% guaranteed: Q: What's the best way to turn my idea into a story? A: Whatever works for you.

The first lie of fiction is that the author gives some order to the chaos of life: chronological order, or whatever order the author chooses.

What interests me in writing a novel is taking really remote voices, characters, and stories and beginning to create some kind of web.

Obviously, I love to do both contemporary and historical fiction. When a hint of a story grabs me, I try to go with it to see where it will take me whatever the setting.

Writing a story is pretty all-consuming for me - it feels a lot like method acting, and for the eight or twelve or fifteen months that I'm working on a story, I'm constantly thinking about how my narrator would react to whatever tangled situation I'm in.

I'm not an outliner. I come up with a premise and then take it from there.

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

I get the beginning. I get the end. Then I write the middle. That's how I do it.

It took me many years to figure out how to structure a compelling story.

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.

The unfolding of a story is both as exciting and as difficult for each and every novel I've written, regardless of time and place.

I tried writing out a plot with the second or third novel I wrote, and it was so boring, so desperately boring.

The reason I choose the stories I choose - and it's why it takes me so long to find ideas - is that I'm looking for that very thing. I want an idea that begins, I want a middle that is compelling and will bring readers along, and I definitely want an ending.

For someone who wants to write a story, they should go on thinking about the story. When it comes up to a level, where it has reached your neck that's when you should go about writing it.

My number one goal has always been to try to tell interesting, cohesive, long-term stories.

In the past, I'd been sort of a fan of writing a coat hanger of a script, and something I could hang ideas off of.

I think I've become a better storyteller over the years.

It begins with the kind of story the writers want to tell. We never sit around in those retreats and say, 'We really need to make a change. Let's change this character.' Or throw a dart at the wall and see what hits. It all begins with story.

I often attribute my screenwriting to journalism because they drill in the who, what, when, where and why - but we really need to land on that why. That's what I've been exploring in my writing for many years and trying to get better at.