Joss Whedon Quotes

I'm very interested in foundational narratives.

Sometimes stories are inherently important whether or not they have a direct relation to your life.

Well, I suppose I'm interested in ways of storytelling and in stories that are about storytelling.

I do think that narrative is very important - I think that we use narrative to organize the world around us, and so it does matter a lot what kinds of narratives we have in our inventories and which ones are reinforced so often and so strongly that we habitually reach for them without thinking.

There's a problem with narratives. Most that spring to mind are fictional.

I prefer to bring these to the service of story rather than to let them replace narrative.

The first thing, when I read the script, is that I need to care about what happens and feel compelled by the story and engaged by the characters. It needs to resonate with me, even if what the characters are going through is not something that I have experienced in my life. I have to feel like it has some sort of meaning to me.

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

The marketplace tells us that good, visceral storytelling has a place. But there are lots of questions about the format that stories take.

I think that's a hallmark of a really good story that it has readers that it speaks to more than others.

To be memorable and to have dramatic impact, informational detail must function actively within the dynamic of a story.

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.

A novel means a new way of doing a story. If you go back the origins of a novel, 'Clarissa' - that's not a novel; it's just a bunch of letters. But it isn't! Because it's organised in a particular way! A novel is what you make of it.

Usually when I read something, first of all I'm looking for the story and then when I reread it, I'm sort of checking every part of it to see if every scene is necessary.

Narrative drives most of economics. Everything seems to be part of a story, and how that story is told often leads to critical error.

I wanted to hold onto and exploit the power of narrative. This is not only a book about a great storyteller, but there have to be stories about the storyteller.

I can't say that the ending of a story is always the best part of the story, and yet there's sort of this implicit idea that the finale is somehow supposed to be the mind-blowing best episode of a show. The question is: Why is that? Why do people make that assumption?

It's a responsibility of the writer to get the reader out of the story somehow.

I believe in three-act structure. When I say that to novel people, or people in the world of books, they go, 'Well, that's a film thing.' However, even a good joke has three acts.

The most-asked question when someone describes a novel, movie or short story to a friend probably is, 'How does it end?' Endings carry tremendous weight with readers; if they don't like the ending, chances are they'll say they didn't like the work. Failed endings are also the most common problems editors have with submitted works.

You can read a dozen different textbooks or how-to manuals that will tell you the basic rules of what makes a story - a beginning, a middle, and an end.

I'm a big believer that the structure of stories should reflect the content of the story.

True stories are way more interesting.

In theory I know that if you have a universal theme and a good story told well, it will work everywhere.

The idea of having a narrative guiding the viewer through and grasping their attention is a really compelling thing.