Plot Engagement Quotes

I think what a lot of action movies lose these days, especially the ones that deal with fantasy, is you stop caring at some point because you've lost human scale.

For many years, I read mystery novels for relaxation. But my tastes were too narrow - and, having read all of Agatha Christie and John Dickson Carr, I discovered that the implausibility and the thinness of the people distracted me unduly from the plot.

I have learned a great deal from the theatrical side of Covent Garden. The Paris Opera Ballet is more concerned with technique. It's perfect. It's beautiful. It's well done. But it lacks the theatrical tradition that is so important in England. At the Royal Ballet, absolutely everyone on stage seems to be caught up in the plot.

I can tell you that as a writer and as a reader, I regard character as king. Or queen. No matter how riveting the action or interesting the plot twists, if I don't feel like I'm meeting someone who feels real, I'm not going to be compelled to read further.

Fiction is about human beings, first and foremost. (It's not impossible to write fiction with no human protagonists, but it's very hard to keep the reader interested ...)

It's just not interesting to play happy people.

I look for characters that interest me, and a story that keeps me involved and makes me want to know what happens next.

If you have great characters, then your reader becomes emotionally invested in those people.

You forget everything. The hours slip by. You travel in your chair through centuries you seem seem to see before you, your thoughts are caught up in the story, dallying with the details or following the course of the plot, you enter into characters, so that it seems as if it were your own heart beating beneath their costumes.

I taught writing for a while and whenever somebody would tell me they were going to write about their dad, I would tell them they might as well go write about killing puppies because neither story was going to work. It just doesn't work.

For me, a good thriller must teach me something about the real world. Thrillers like 'Coma,' 'The Hunt for Red October' and 'The Firm' all captivated me by providing glimpses into realms about which I knew very little - medical science, submarine technology and the law.

With 'Duplicity', I was a little bit like, 'This isn't that hard of a movie.' This isn't like some huge brain trust of a movie. You gotta be a little bit awake to follow the plot, but it's really just a kind of light entertainment. It's like those Cary Grant movies, which are not meant to be anything other than diverting. In a nice way.

Get too conceptual, too cute and remote, and your characters die on the page.

The more limitations you put on a character, often times the better a character you'll make them, the more interesting the story becomes because the character can't simply wave a hand and make something happen. They have to work within the framework.

It is scary for an actor when you get hired as a lead. No matter what the plot is, it is your job to do something interesting enough to make them want to get inside the lead character's head.

'Burn Notice' is a show that definitely has some levity to it and it's a fun show, but it's also, you fully believe, you're fully invested that Michael Westen does this stuff. You want Michael Westen on your team.

I'm told my SF is of the hard variety and my Fantasy is romantic but hopefully all the characters are strong and the plots are lively.

You want to see the people you've sort of come to know and love, or love to hate, you want to see them develop in some way. And I hope people get sort of caught up in that arc.

For my part, the good novel of character is the novel I can always pick up; but the good novel of incident is the novel I can never lay down.