Isaac Asimov Quotes

Do not start a story unless you have an ending in mind. You can change the story's ending if you wish, but you should always have a destination.

All stories have a beginning, a middle and an ending, and if they're any good, the ending is a beginning.

I don't start a story until I know where it's going to end.

Writing a short story is a little like walking into a dark room, finding a light and turning it on. The light is the end of the story.

Don't mistake a good setup for a satisfying conclusion - many beginning writers end their stories when the real story is just ready to begin.

To come up with the ending to a story and then work backwards is like tying your shoe with one hand only.

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.

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.

As far as personal philosophies go, I think you should know your ending. I know that's radically different from a lot of other writers who just organically like to find the story. Other than that, I try different things and mess around. I'm still just playing a good bit.

When I first began to have the initial idea for 'Heartsease,' I just wrote a skeleton story; that is, I started her off as this young, bright 16-year-old and then added the events that occurred and where she and other characters fitted in, even writing 3 different endings, as I was not sure where Mary's story would lead to.

I suspect there are two kinds of novelists. Those who have a point of view and have something to say and then write a novel in order to say that thing, and those of us who write the book in order to find out what we think about that thing.

My job as an author is to tell the story in the best way possible, to make it flow seamlessly and get the reader to keep turning the page.

There is commerciality in storytelling, even in a film or a piece of literature. These things exist. That's why stories came to be: to hold attention and, while you're not looking, you'll get hopefully some nutritional value that the author has been working up. That's narrative; that's passing stuff down.

There are so many projects that you go into hoping the story works, and here comes a new third act and that kind of thing.

I spent ages figuring out things like viewpoint, how you tell the story, and so on.

And I don't want to begin something, I don't want to write that first sentence until all the important connections in the novel are known to me. As if the story has already taken place, and it's my responsibility to put it in the right order to tell it to you.

When I begin to write a story, I usually know how things will end. It's the journey toward that point I must discover. The process is sometimes painful, but also exciting.

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

If you gather a lot of stuff, then you write it, write in scenes with dialogue. Somewhere in the middle, rising from all this research like strong metal towers, is your opinions.

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

I think it's much more natural as a writer to want to tell one story rather than lots of small stories that are half an hour long.

I can't really write anything without knowing the ending. I don't know how people do that. Even with my superhero stuff, I have to know at least where I want to take the characters and what the ending of my story with them will be. I just can't structure stories or character arcs and stuff without knowing the endpoint.

I don't think the relationship between novels and realities are one to one. Of course novels play different roles. It's essentially just a long narrative form. What you use that long narrative form for can be very different.

It's important, I think, for a writer of fiction to maintain an awareness of the pace and shape of the book as he's writing it. That is, he should be making an object, not chattering.

One of the reasons I started working at 'South Park,' actually, was that I wanted to learn how to structure things and how to tell a story.