Fairy tales are loved by the child not because the imagery he finds in them conforms to what goes on within him, but because--despite all the angry, anxious thoughts in his mind to which the fairy tale gives body and specific content--these stories always result in a happy outcome, which the child cannot imagine on his own.
A true epilogue is removed from the story in time or space. That's the reason it is called an 'Epilogue'; the label serves to alert the reader that the story itself is over, but we are going to now see a distant result or consequence of that story.
And that's the way of a real tale. Take any one that you're fond of. You may know, or guess, what kind of a tale it is, happy-ending or sad-ending, but the people in it don't know. And you don't want them to.
Get to know your characters as well as you can let there be something at stake, and then let the chips fall where they may.
People know where romantic comedies are going. It's not brain surgery to figure out the end of a romantic comedy.
The thing with Stephen King is that everyone dies, and everyone comes back to life. So you never know with his mind where things go. It's the same with Steven Spielberg, too.
When a man writes a romance, the woman dies. When a woman writes one, it ends all tidy and sweet.
'The Assassins' Gate' is a very tightly controlled story of the ideas that led to the war and the consequences of those ideas in Iraq, and there is no doubt about where it is going and what kind of groundwork is being laid.
I think of my life as a cheap novel. Part of you wants it to go on forever, and part of you wants to see how it comes out.
I never try to give a message in my books. It's about living with characters long enough to hear their voices and let them tell me the story. Sometimes I would love to have a happy ending, and it doesn't happen because the character or the story leads me in another direction.
I think that's what distinguishes YA from adult fiction - it's not just the age of the characters, but it's the sense of hope. Because I don't think I've ever read a YA book that feels completely hopeless at the end.
For the really scary stuff to work at the end you have to fall in love a little bit with the family and want then to be ok. And once you get the audience to buy in on that then they care. They want them to be okay.
I like to read the ending first.
You don’t know what’s going to happen in the end, and that’s what the best plays are.
My role is to just tell the highest degree of truth with every character and every story. From there, I have no clue whatsoever how things are going to turn out.
My films are about ideals that clash with the world. Every time it's a man in the lead, they have forgotten about the ideals. And every time it's a woman in the lead, they take the ideals all the way.
Characters who are on screen from start to finish are not necessarily the ones who have the greatest impact.
If we can continue to tell stories where fans don't know what will happen next, I think that will be a plus in this 'Divas Revolution.'
Rocky is a very predictable movie. The ending is a foregone conclusion.
Your characters have to remain innocent of what your picture is after.
The test of any good fiction is that you should care something for the characters; the good to succeed, the bad to fail. The trouble with most fiction is that you want them all to land in hell, together, as quickly as possible.
Because characters are your creations, you are the one who ultimately gets to decide their fate.
The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what fiction means.
I love 'Memory Keeper's Daughter,' but in some ways I think 'The Lake of Dreams' is a stronger book. I was able to tell the story I wanted to tell. That's all you can ever do as a writer. From there on you have no control over it.
Even in novels where the love relationship isn't the focus, I feel like it's often there, and the background is some barometer of whether this is a happy or sad story or whether this is a successful or unsuccessful life.
