Storytelling Freedom Quotes

If we were writing what the fans wanted to see, Betty and Jughead would be the most linear, monotonous narrative of all time.

Sometimes my characters are not myself.

The way that we're consuming what we watch. Netflix, binge-watching, destination agnostic were not terms. It was about networks, times, dates. Even with feature films, you had to see it this way, in this capacity, at this time. All that has changed. Now it's really about the story. It's a gift that I became a storyteller at this time.

In my experience, very few people walk out of a movie. You have them for two hours, and you're free to explain or not explain whatever you see fit.

Genre might certainly increase some of your narrative freedoms, but it also diminishes others. That's the nature of genre.

I've always said at the beginning of every single season of the show when I was running the show in the writers' room, "This is the last season, so let's smoke 'em if we've got 'em."

If you open the door and realize things like the fact that Batman is occupying the same narrative space that Robin Hood used to fill 400 years ago, then you have the freedom to ignore the pointless "what is literature" discussion and just talk about stories.

The things that I'm interested in directing are fiction, because then you're not married to a particular reality.

The joy of doing 'Sandman' was doing a comic and telling people, 'No, it has an end,' at a time when nobody thought you could actually get to the end and stop doing a comic that people were still buying just because you'd finished.

Writing a novel is easier than writing a memoir; you are not constrained by the truth.

The great movie can be as free of being a record of the progress of the protagonist as is a dream.

I wish I had more control, more like Edgar Rice Burroughs had, but I'm a realist, too. I work in television. I don't know that I would want to spend the rest of my life controlling my characters.

All movies, when they're about the music business, tend to have a bit of a wide latitude in terms of how things really were.

So long as you tell a story that falls within the fairly generous boundaries of the suspense novel, you're free to make the novel as good as you can. You're allowed to challenge the reader. You can experiment with voice and style.

I think there is a real thing going on where writers are feeling more liberated to write with a big canvas because of a demonstrable, continued appetite for long-form storytelling.

Do I feel that white directors have to tell only white stories? No. Do I feel that black filmmakers should only tell stories about black people? No. If we say that, then that means Asian people cannot write about anybody but Asians. I don't think a woman should only write about women.

With 'Game of Thrones,' there are no real limitations.

You can watch any episode you want and have a compelling story being told.

If I can build a coalition of people who are interested in what I have to say and what I'm thinking, I hope they'll come with me if I want to go tell a story that doesn't have dinosaurs in it - which I plan to do.

There are so many different narrative traditions across the world, and each of those traditions has evolved dramatically over time. Once I understood that, I felt truly free; I could write and invent the way I wanted to because there never has been only one way to tell a good story.

I don't feel that I wanted to spend my whole writing life - which is my life - writing detective stories.

I love breaking the fourth wall, and being given permission to play with the audience!

Non-fiction or documentaries can tell any kind of a story because they don't have to adhere to the rules of what's possible. When you're making something up, you have to say, 'Well, this is what would happen here,' but in reality, stuff happens that seems impossible.

The films that I've done before were original stories most of the time, I did two adaptations before this, but they were mostly original stories where I had complete freedom to evolve in the direction I wanted.

I freely admit that I took great license in writing 'The Dark Queen,' more so than my other historical romance novels. This is largely because I viewed the book as a fantasy novel as much as an historical. I do feel that writers should strive for as much accuracy as possible but, in the end, remember that we are writing fiction.