storytelling effectiveness Quotes

The main question to a novel is -- did it amuse? were you surprised at dinner coming so soon? did you mistake eleven for ten? were you too late to dress? and did you sit up beyond the usual hour? If a novel produces these effects, it is good; if it does not -- story, language, love, scandal itself cannot save it. It is only meant to please; and it must do that or it does nothing.

If it's a good movie, the sound could go off and the audience would still have a perfectly clear idea of what was going on.

The thing for me, and I can only really judge this by what I respond to myself as an audience member, I really only respond to a movie if I'm interested in the people who are in it. It's really that simple. If I'm not, then it's all noise.

The Business story is designed to trigger the listener to take an effective action. If it doesn't, the story fails.

How well you tell your story determines how well your customers tell your story.

If I start paying attention to the mechanics of a film while watching it, then it's generally a bad film.

If the audience, in minute 50, is thinking about the way a movie is shot, there's a problem. I want it to permeate emotionally.

I try to tell a story that's good enough to win the right to integrate eternal themes into it. If it's poorly written or comes across as a sermon, then obviously you don't reach people, because they're aware that you're imposing something on a story that isn't innate to it.

If you tell a story that's only allegory, then it doesn't help you at all. If it doesn't bring some emotional charge, then it's just talking about something.

I love when a TV show, or entertainment in general, makes me feel something; be it positive, be it negative, be it happiness, be it awkward, uncomfortable if it can make me feel, it's done it's job.

I think a story is an attention grabber. I think it's a truth conveyor. Those are two great features of a good story.

If a story is not about the hearer, he will not listen. And here I make a rule—a great and interesting story is about everyone or it will not last.

I'll put 'Stranger Things' up there with the best of it. I think it's such a profound show - it's very subtle in the way that it tells its story, but it's very effective. Every time I watch it, I feel something, which is very rare for me.

Have you ever heard someone tell a story but felt they are just mouthing the words without being emotionally connected? When you do this, you often create a more negative reaction than if you hadn't told a story at all. That's because others can see that you're just going through the motions.

A movie that is unable to elicit emotion isn't a movie.

If you find that a point cannot be made without narration, it is virtually certain that the point is unimportant to the story (which is to say, to the audience).

One of the reasons wrestling works is because it allows people to suspend their disbelief. They may know it's not real, but if it's done well enough, they get sucked into it emotionally. And that's why they watch.

Neurologists say that our brains are programmed much more for stories than for abstract ideas. Tales with a little drama are remembered far longer than any slide crammed with analytics.

When grey character gets entertaining, the job is done.

From personal experience, I completely agree that it is often easier to go for monotone sadness. When I was starting out, I wrote a gazillion short stories that ran the gamut of human suffering - drug addiction, child abuse, terminal illness, loved ones dying by all manner of misfortune, etc. In hindsight, it's clear that I mistook the power of the situation for the power of the story.

I think the quality of television, given the amount of time you have, how short you have, is proportionally so much better than most movies.

I know not whether the remark is to our honour or otherwise, that lessons of wisdom have never such power over us, as when they are wrought into the heart, through the ground-work of a story which engages the passions: Is it that we are like iron, and must first be heated before we can be wrought upon?

Having certain limits - not too many, but certain limits on an ability to tell a story - makes us work harder, me and my writers. Sometimes I watch a giant movie with a $250 million budget and I think they feel kind of bloated, and that if they'd been leaner and meaner they might've had better storytelling.

You can't feel sorry for a scene. If the movie works without the scene, then you don't need the scene.