Edwin Catmull Quotes

I'm big on story structure. I studied with John Truby, who mapped out story by means of moral wants and needs, and that's what I do. Hey, so does John Irving.

As a writer, I had learned a lot on 'Margin Call' about embracing the weaknesses of a narrative and of a project. A story always has an inherent narrative weakness.

In a lot of ways, TV writing taught me how to be a good storyteller. I learned about dialogue, scenes, moving the plot forward.

I don't start with the characters. I start with the series of events that will provide the conflict and how it can be resolved. Characters are incidental.

My forte is the plotting. You sit down, and you work out a plot.

When I'm plotting out a book, I use a storyboard - I'll have maybe three lines across on the storyboard and just start working through the plot line. I always know where relationships will go and how the book is going to end.

My only conclusion about structure is that nothing works if you don't have interesting characters and a good story to tell.

For me, 'The Hobbit' is an object lesson in storytelling, both in terms of characterization and story structure. It is an exemplar of storytelling in that regard.

You have to look for story. That's obvious. If that's not on the page, you can forget it. But I also read whatever character I'm being offered. And if you can cut them out without it affecting the story, then I say no straight away.

In the 'Buffy' room, it was never about a plot twist, ever. It was always about, 'Tell the story, tell the characters, complicate their lives, make things get worse,' but we never worked backwards from the plot, and it was always a great lesson.

I don't make unconventional stories; I don't make non-linear stories. I like linear storytelling a lot.

In order to deliver the emotional truth in the story, you have to include some of the literal truth.

Settings are obviously important - and as a writer, you have to respect what was real at the time of the story you're writing. But the real key to success lies in finding the right characters to carry that story.

I jump around in the plotting stage, where I basically just make a bulleted list of every damn thing that happens in the entire book.

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

What I have in advance are people I want to write about and a problem or problems that I see those people encountering and that I want to explore - it all proceeds sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph, and scene by scene.

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

As an actor, I think a mistake that any storyteller can make is to play the ending.

Some novels present a story form many points of view. Most movies tell only one person's side of the story. Sometime it's easy to use the strongest point of view, or find the character with the most dramatic experience. It depends on which themes the scriptwriter wants to explore.

In judging other people's work, particularly short stories, I have noticed how novice writers tell the readers everything about their characters in the first paragraphs, disclose their motives, reveal their recent activities and their future intentions.

I think a lot of drama, nowadays, is character-based and development-based, but 'True Blood' is very plot-oriented.

I care about narrative structure; I care about how stories unfold.

I think my sensibilities about storytelling and character just automatically come into play when I'm trying to work on any kind of narrative. For me, it doesn't really matter what the source of the narrative is. I will be looking for ways to make it into an intriguing story with empathetic characters.

I think all good short stories are about what it means to tell a good story.

I could make up characters till the cows came home. Plot's what hard. Very hard.