Narrative Framing Quotes

Big media are all about the angle, the spin. Look to the overarching theme that runs through each and every news story. Be hip to the meta-narrative peddled.

No matter how stark the reality, a human being fits it into a narrative that is palatable.

To frame an issue is to reduce it to a story for which there is only one possible outcome

People will say, 'There are a million ways to shoot a scene,' but I don't think so. I think there are two, maybe. And the other one is wrong.

As problems have grown more complex, leaders have struggled to find the language to discuss them clearly, credibly and at the right emotional amplitude. Nonplussed and tongue-tied, politicians give themselves over to message gurus … who peddle the notion that poll-tested words — honed and targeted with scientific precision — can pick the lock of public opinion.

Life only has narrative when we frame it and edit it and call it certain things.

Originally the structure was . . . a modern narrator who would appear intermittently and talk about his memories of his grandmother, which would then be juxtaposed against scenes from the past. But the stories from the past were always more interesting that the things in the present. I find this almost endemic to modern plays that veer between past and present. . . . So as we've gone on developing GOLDEN CHILD, the scenes from the past have become more dominant, and all that remains of the present are these two little bookends that frame the action.

The difference between hope and despair is a different way of telling stories from the same facts.

Herein, folks, lies the answer of [Donald] Trump's success. In other words, the media covers things as stories that you would read about in a book or watch in a movie or a television show - and in this case, in the Republican primary, Trump was not the villain.

Filmmaking isn’t if you can just strap on a camera onto an actor, and steadicam, and point it at their face, and follow them through the movie, that is not what moviemaking is, that is not what it’s about. It’s not just about getting a performance. It’s also about the psychology of the cinematic moment, and the psychology of the presentation of that, of that window.

In journalism, there are only two stories - "Oh, the wonder of it," and "Oh, the shame of it."

The media have such a strong hand in deciding what people's perceptions are. They decide what the agenda is going to be, what the issues are.

In my couple of books, including Going Clear, the book about Scientology, I thought it seemed appropriate at the end of the book to help the reader frame things. Because we've gone through the history, and there's likely conflictual feelings in the reader's mind. The reader may not agree with me, but I don't try to influence the reader's judgment. I know everybody who picks this book up already has a decided opinion. But my goal is to open the reader's mind a little bit to alternative narratives.

I don't think it's going to be possible for the next generation of writers to tell stories without telling stories about telling stories.

In both law and politics, I think the essential battle is the meta-battle of framing the narrative.

The media traditionally is simply an arm of the Democrat Party that is used in service of advancing the Democrat Party agenda, and the Republicans haven't come up with a way of having a more engaging, entertaining story because the Republican story is never anything other than, "We don't want Democrat X to have what he wants."

Typically in my novels the narrator tells a story by remembering, and the memories are colored by this and colored by that. So the whole universe of the novel tends to be framed by the narrator's memories and thoughts.

The starting point and the ending point are nothing but two arbitrary choices. You make them as in soccer games, where they chose that it's 90 minutes, not less and not more. But the choices are the responsibility of the filmmaker. You have to choose to join the story at an arbitrary point, and you leave it at an arbitrary point.