Nancy Kress Quotes

It's often the case that the most strained moments in books are the very beginning and the very end - the getting in and the getting out. The ending, especially: it's awkward, as if the writer doesn't know when the book is over and nervously says it all again.

More than working toward the book's climax, I work toward the denouement. As a reader and a writer, that's where I find the real satisfaction.

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

The nice thing about a series is you can end on cliffhangers all the time. You can be like, 'You know what? Here we go, this person just died, end of book.' And with the end of the series, you're very conscious of all the plotlines that were left hanging. There's a balance there to wrap those up but still leave it exciting.

Certainly, 3rd acts of any movie are hard. It's always hard to have something that will give you the promises from the beginning of the movie. That's true for all movies.

If you make a trilogy, the whole point is to get to that third chapter, and the third chapter is what justifies what's come before.

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.

The end of a story must be stronger rather than weaker than the beginning, since it is the end which contains the denouement or culmination and which will leave the strongest impression upon the reader.

I often find that writers who disavow the importance of an ending are just not very good at endings.

There's a reason a happy ending is called an ending. The trick of a television storyteller is to find all the rivers and mountains and valleys on the way to that ending.

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.

But then of course you reach a point where you have to say, I've got to figure out how this book's going to end. Otherwise, you're going to write yourself into so many dead-ends.

What makes a story a story is that something changes. Internal, external, small or large, trivial or of earth-shattering importance. Doesn't matter.

It's nice to know when you're a part of a story, it's nice to know at least something about the beginning, middle, and end.

Oddly, the meanings of books are defined for me much more by their beginnings and middles than they are by their endings.

You have considerable choice in how you end your fiction. For all stories, the basic rule is the same: Choose the type of ending that best suits what's gone before.

I started thinking about the endings of novels not because I think endings are so important, but because I think they're actually not as important as they're sometimes given credit for.

It's always good to have a story arch.

I better make the plot good. I wanted to make it grip people on the first page and have a big turning point in the middle, as there is, and construct the whole thing like a roller coaster ride.

For me the end of a book is just as exciting as it is for a reader.

The great thing about a trilogy is that it feels like you've got a beginning, a middle, and an end.

If you have a beautiful story, it has to have conflict. If you don't have conflict, it can't be a good story.

The biggest regret I have about 'Rubicon' is that we didn't end it. Sometimes you do these shows and you don't have the opportunity to get closure. Stories are supposed to have a beginning, middle and an end.

The good ending dismisses us with a touch of ceremony and throws a backward light of significance over the story just read. It makes it, as they say, or unmakes it. A weak beginning is forgettable, but the end of a story bulks in the reader's mind like the giant foot in a foreshortened photograph.

Endings are the toughest, harder than beginnings. They must satisfy the expectations you have hopefully generated in your reader - not frustrate them, leave the reader grasping at elusive strings.