Narrative Order Quotes

The situation comes first...the characters...come next...[then] begin to narrate.

But, you have to watch them in order. That's very important because, as it turns out, stories have to be told in order. It's like reading a novel. There are times when it's tiring. And then, you get hooked and it's a page-turner, and you really want to keep reading. I do think there will be some fatigue that sets in.

Perhaps fiction has, for me, served a similar purpose--what is a narrative arc if not the imposition of order on disparate events?--and perhaps it is my avid reading that has been my faith all along.

There's a bit of debate about that; some say it was really Matthew, but the popular consensus is that Mark was the first one, so that's why I did that one first. And I was planning on doing all four.

Originally the film opened with Ryan in the doctor's office, being told his wife is dying. Then we see him walking the streets, and the story is told in flashback.

My biographers... would like to have my time at the court almost complete before they finish the book. We decided... to flip the order.

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.

I'm one of those people who think that stories should have a beginning, a middle and an end, and then they're over, and then you tell the next story.

Stories hold power because they convey the illusion that life has purpose and direction. Where God is absent from the lives of all but the most blessed, the writer, of all people, replaces that ordering principle. Stories make sense when so much around us is senseless, and perhaps what makes them most comforting is that, while life goes on and pain goes on, stories do us the favor of ending.

A story should have a beginning, a middle and an end, but not necessarily in that order.

Let us again pretend that life is a solid substance, shaped like a globe, which we turn about in our fingers. Let us pretend that we can make out a plain and logical story, so that when one matter is despatched—love for instance—we go on, in an orderly manner, to the next.

The true secret in being a hero lies in knowing the order of things. The swineherd cannot already be wed to the princess when he embarks on his adventures, nor can the boy knock on the witch's door when she is already away on vacation. The wicked uncle cannot be found out and foiled before he does something wicked. Things must happen when it is time for them to happen. Quests may not simply be abandoned; prophecies may not be left to rot like unpicked fruit; unicorns may go unrescued for a very long time, but not forever. The happy ending cannot come in the middle of the story.

The first is that instead of writing a sequel, which is what most people do, this is in fact a prequel. Although we didn't know that when we began the process.