James McBride Quotes

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.

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.

The only thing I knew about novels from a technical point of view was that they should have conflict.

I believe that, in any novel of mine, the principal objective is the construction of the whole.

I always think plot is what you fall back on if you can't write, to keep things going.

I write both fiction and nonfiction. I begin my fiction with the main character. The story comes later.

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

My work as a screenwriter has influenced my fiction. Writing screenplays forces you to consider many elements regarding story structure and other narrative devices that can be used to enhance the infinitely more complex demands of a novel.

When I'm writing a story, I try to reduce it to the barest possible components and go from there.

When I began writing novels, I read Aristotle to learn how to perfect structure, Pearl Cleage to sustain tension, and Nora Roberts for characterization.

I don't think in terms of optimism and pessimism when writing a story. I am telling a story.

A short story is something that you can hold in your mind. You can really analyze how the entire thing works, like a machine.

An attempt to write nothing but characterization will soon bog down; I for one don't want to have somebody tell me about someone else.

All the writing elements are the same. You need to tell a good story... You've got good characters... People think there's some dramatic difference between writing 'Little Bear' and the 'Hunger Games,' and as a writer, for me, there isn't.

I believe that the writer should tell a story. I believe in plot. I believe in creating characters and suspense.

In fiction workshops, we tend to focus on matters of verisimilitude largely because such issues are so much easier to talk about than the failure of imagination.

Events at home, at work, in the street - these are the bases for a story.

I love a really good storyline.

A good story cannot be devised; it has to be distilled.

I find that most people know what a story is until they sit down to write one.

In the writing of novels, there is the problem of how to shape a narrative.

I never believed I could write anything. No way - write a whole story? Figuring out all that plotting and symbolism? How do you foreshadow things?

Even if your novel occurs in an unfamiliar setting in which all the customs and surroundings will seem strange to your reader, it's still better to start with action. The reason for this is simple. If the reader wanted an explanation of milieu, he would read nonfiction. He doesn't want information. He wants a story.

You can have the greatest characters in the world and write beautifully, but if nothing's happening, the story falls on its face pretty quickly.

Obviously, for me, story is first and foremost, even in the face of the attractive idea of having all the cast there, or having a great piece of talent come to it.