Story Effectiveness Quotes

You set out to tell a good story. You don't do it because there is a deep message involved because the movie is almost always bad when you do that.

Every story needs an element of suspense - or it's lousy.

I mean, the first 'Back to the Future' is kind of a perfect script, I think, in terms of handling time travel the best. It depends on your definition. To me, that means it effectively uses it in the story.

When you first read a script is the purest moment. That's when you can understand how an audience will ultimately receive it. The first reading of the script is so important because you're experiencing it all for the first time, and it's then that you really know if it's going to work or not.

If you tell an amateur that his story is not good, he always declares indignantly: 'Oh, but it really happened just like this!' The writer who doesn't understand that this is beside the point is not a writer at all.

History is full of blank spaces, but good stories, invariably, are not.

Novels should be judged rigorously. Either a book works or it doesn't. The fact that something is true in the real world should not lend authority to it in fiction.

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.

If you have a great story, any film will work.

In, like, seventh or eighth grade every day after school, my friend Andrew and I would watch 'Wayne's World.' And I think it's a great example of a sketch effectively turned into a movie and a story that really works with a good journey. Not easily accomplished, but such a good journey.

That's what I want as a reader - I want to be confident that the book will do its job.

I believe in anything that will engage the audience and make the story more effective.

The fundamental difference between the mystery story and the ghost story is the fact that a mystery demands a solution for its effectiveness; a ghost story is necessarily unsolvable; the reader must be willing to accept the fact that nothing is proved.

When you can state the theme of a story, when you can separate it from the story itself, then you can be sure the story is not a very good one.

I Never Liked You. I think that's my best book. I think it works the best as a story, and I like the drawing. It works on both levels, for me at least.

Short stories can be rather stark and bare unless you put in the right details. Details make stories human, and the more human a story can be, the better.

The simple, sweet films without the star power often manage to tell a better story.