Neal Stephenson Quotes

It is the creator of fiction's point of view; it is the character who interests him. Sometimes he wants to convince the reader that the story he is telling is as interesting as universal history.

I think one of the hardest things about doing a book in the first person is that to a certain extent each day, when you begin to do your work, you're climbing into somebody else's skin.

In film as a medium, you're often given a baddie and a goodie and told what to think about them; it's usually a very definite point of view.

I'm not sure that all books aren't that way. I think that might apply to any book I was writing. The book was kind of the product of this enormous infatuation I had, not only with the office and office politics, but with perspective, and trying to tell a story from as wide a range of perspectives as you possibly can. I tried to capture it all with the first-person plural, but once I settled on that, I used it to tell the story from as many angles as I could. I guess, to put it romantically, it was about a love affair with the craft of perspective.

One of the most difficult things in writing a novel or anything at all is to choose the point of view from which it's going to be told.

I think the hardest part of writing anything is getting exposition out easily, without hitting people over the head with it.

Everyone is interesting except the narrator in a first-person story.

There are a lot of celebrities that I think can get a little bit distracted by the way that our society views celebrity. All of a sudden, the film becomes about, "Come see this celebrity!" I'm not interested in that. I want to see a story.

The best movies are made from a point of view of an understanding of human nature and an understanding of history and an understanding of what motivates people, of what makes a good movie from an emotional place.

The structural notions to me always have to be worked out very carefully in the script stage. Whatever a particular structure is. Whether it's chronological or non-chronological. To me that's always about what point of view are we trying to address in the film?

The way that I see third person is it's actually first person. Writing for me is all voice work. Third person narrative is just as character-driven as first person narrative for me in terms of a voice. I don't write very much in third person.

Early on, I settled on the first-person strategy as a way to deal with exposition and world-description issues. As long as the book is, it could have been far longer had I gone with an omniscient third-person narrator, or multiple point-of-view characters, since either of those would have enabled me to impart much more detailed information about the history and geography of the world.

I don't think the 'what' distinguishes a good novel from a bad one but rather the 'how.'

The characters are telling you the story. I'm not telling you the story, they're going to do it. If I do it right, you will get the whole story.

Don't tell readers what to think. Let the action speak for itself.

I believe in characters as vehicles of exposition. Their voices are full of hidden clues, and I like to listen to them.

I like the discipline of writing a script. You can't go into the character's head - you have to find these creative ways to help externalize what they're thinking.

I just think that pop music is very interesting in how it can reach so many people. I like that I can tell stories and I just wanted to be heard more, I guess. That's why it's pop, but in my mind I don't really view my music as pop, I don't really view it as anything. I just look at it as a picture, I like visuals.

I think part of my success as an editor came from never worrying about a fact, a cause, an atmosphere. It was me—projecting to the public. That was my job. I think I always had a perfectly clear view of what was possible for the public. Give ‘em what they never knew they wanted.

I've always used the technique of the cuento. I am an oral storyteller, but now I do it on the printed page. I think if we were very wise we would use that same tradition in video cassettes, in movies, and on radio.

I think the voice over actually enhances the various moments instead of compensating for something that's lacking. Voice over can be tricky. It can be dangerous because its over used or inappropriately used. I think in this case it informs the story.

I was thinking about the difference in voice between the different characters. Each voice has to be unique. Hypothetically you should be able to read each chapter without the heading that tells you who is telling the story.

It's harder to write in the third person but the advantage is you move around better.

It makes sense that that's part of the story and everything, but that's part of any story of any record - where was it record and how long and what were the people doing. I think people want to know where these events are made. That's why I like the word "record."

All of my books really do look at that to degrees of difference. Technically, I do enjoy the flashback! But not just for informational material.