Immersive Narrative Quotes

You see, I am trying in all my stories to get the feeling of the actual life across - not to just depict life - or criticize it - but to actually make it alive. So that when you have read something by me, you actually experience the thing. You can't do this without putting in the bad and the ugly as well as what is beautiful.

San Francisco itself is art, above all literary art. Every block is a short story, every hill a novel. Every home a poem, every dweller within immortal. That is the whole truth.

I like that the 'Underworld' series created a whole other world that's totally different yet familiar to our own.

It's satisfying to watch a story where you feel like you're a fly on the wall.

Good cinema is what we can believe and bad cinema is what we can't believe. What you see and believe in is very much what I'm interested in.

World-building numbs the reader's ability to fulfill their part of the bargain because it believes that it has to do everything around here if anything is going to get done. Above all, world-building is not technically necessary. It is the great clomping foot of nerdism. It is the attempt to exhaustively survey a place that isn't there.

Setting shouldn't just consist of describing nature or a landscape, or of saying where something takes place. It is the world of specific people. It's not enough for it to feel vivid or credible; it should feel necessary.

Interactive storytelling emphasizes a personal connection with the characters. It is a powerful tool that can draw you so deeply into the world of a story that you lose sight of it as a story. You think you are there - at least, if it is done right.

I want to write stories that don't help you escape life, but embrace life.

I want the camerawork to fit the narrative and tell the story from the point of view of the character, but sometimes, to be interacting with the sensations of the story, you almost become like a ghost, you know? Like, someone that is floating, observing, not really judging what's going on.

I like stories where it feels like you're only seeing a small window of a bigger world.

It is a great vehicle for storytelling, especially for a certain kind of exhaustively reported, painstakingly fact-checked, and beautifully produced narrative.

I like making movies that have some of the qualities of first-person shooter games. That was very important to me for the 'Bourne' franchise.