Plot Advancement Quotes

But my philosophy is that plot advancement is not what the experience of reading fiction is about. If all we care about is advancing the plot, why read novels? We can just read Cliffs Notes.

Plot is a map and I begin with it. It is what made me admire the novels of the 19th century; that the stories are foreshadowed. TheyÕre going someplace.

Every paragraph should accomplish two goals: advance the story, and develop your characters as complex human beings.

Anything you put in a play -- any speech -- has got to do one of two things: either define character or push the action of the play along.

Rule of storytelling: When a character is shoved against a wall, shove them against a wall harder.

Every story starts with an idea, but it is the characters that move this idea forward.

A song must move the story ahead. A song must take the place of dialogue. If a song halts the show, pushes it back, stalls it, the audience won't buy it; they'll be unhappy.

I think love is a great catalyst for many characters to further the story or their own growth.

The narrative shouldn't stop for the song in a musical. The music has to continue the narrative of the storytelling.

I think every character is important in every film - be it small, primary, or lead - because they are adding something to the story, taking it forward.

What must novel dialogue . . . really be and do? It must be pointed, intentional, relevant. It must crystallize situation. It must express character. It must advance plot. During dialogue, the characters confront one another. The confrontation is in itself an occasion. Each one of these occasions, throughout the novel, is unique.

What is a scene? a) A scene starts and ends in one place at one time (the Aristotelian unities of time and place-this stuff goes waaaayyyy back). b) A scene starts in one place emotionally and ends in another place emotionally. Starts angry, ends embarrassed. Starts lovestruck, ends disgusted. c) Something happens in a scene, whereby the character cannot go back to the way things were before. Make sure to finish a scene before you go on to the next. Make something happen.

Sometimes people that are very good at improvisation in life, meaning like stage improvisation, aren't good in films because you have to ultimately take a scene where it needs to go. It's not about just saying something that's funny. You can say something funny but if it's not on story or driving the scene to its end it's really not very helpful at all.

If a scene doesn't work on three levels - it's not advancing the story, the characters, and telling me something new - then put it in the trash.

The whole magic of a plot requires that somebody be impeded from getting something over with.

As a director, when you cut scenes from a movie, you do it with the idea that it is making the story move forward and progress. Sometimes, you don't realize that something is actually a sidetrack for the story, or it takes the tension out of a scene.

You don't start at the top if you want to find the story. You start in the middle, because it's the people in the middle who do the actual work in the world.

In musical theater, if you have a song, it has to advance the plot. If you have a song in a musical and it does not advance the plot, it gets dropped.

Dialogue in fiction is what characters do to one another.

My hope is that I'm going to continue to make more and more challenging work that's going to come out more and more interesting. I don't know if that will always continue to happen, but every one of my films has definitely been a progression as far as complexity of narrative, character, and plot.

It's the writer's job to stage confrontations, so the characters will say surprising and revealing things, and educate and entertain us all.

Spoilers are inevitable.

Personally, my taste is towards development of a character, as well as the resolution of a story plot. I like to find both, if I can.

Each piece of dialogue MUST be "something happening". . .The "amusing" for its OWN sake should above all be censored. . .The functional use of dialogue for the plot must be the first thing in the writer's mind. Where functional usefulness cannot be established, dialogue must be left out.

It's guff. It doesn't advance the action. It makes for nice fat books such as the American market thrives on, but it doesn't actually get you anywhere.