Storytelling Mastery Quotes

People are interested if you tell stories well and relevantly.

I still think 'The Lord of the Rings' is the greatest literary achievement in my lifetime. Like so many other people, I couldn't wait for the second and then the third book. Nothing like it had ever been written.

I mean, yeah, Anne Fletcher was a choreographer, but she was born to be a director. You need to have the ability to figure out people's rhythms. It all starts from the script.

WORK ON YOUR STORY! He/she who has the best story wins! In life! In business! The White House!

Become the director, producer, choreographer of your own story

I think 'Star Wars' always has to be bigger and bigger and better every time, and there's a great cast on 'The Force Awakens.' It's ground-breaking.

If there's a new HBO series, you know there's going to be a certain level of storytelling mastery - that you can trust it.

Getting back in the directors chair - there's a sense of like doing something every year. It's not like riding a bike, you're always learning new things, you're gonna face new challenges and when you face new challenges you'll have an answer for them.

You can't learn to write that way - by writing directly for the screen. Wait until you're 30. But in the meantime write 200 short stories. You've got to learn how to write!

The one who tells the stories rules.

Good stories flow like honey but bad stories stick in the craw [gullet]. What is a bad story? It's a story that cannot be absorbed in the first time of reading. It's a story that leaves questions unanswered.

I'm a writer. That's who I am, at my core. I'm a writer, and then I learned production and administration, along the way. I feel like most people can learn it because production and the administration part is all about logic, and it's all about learning rules and budgets.

If you aren't telling a good story, nobody thinks you died too soon; they just think you died.

I think great filmmakers will always talk in terms of storytelling. These guys were always about the story. That is how I love to talk about a film.

It's all still about having a good story. You have to have a good story as your anchor, as your main focus. So for me, personally, I just like to concentrate on writing the best book I can, and if there's other stuff that goes along with it, that's awesome, as long as the story is central.

Working with Ridley is working with one of the great filmmakers and one of the great raconteurs. You know, it's like, a dinner with Ridley Scott or a dinner with Martin Scorsese? You just want to cut your arm off to get those.

I wanted to hold onto and exploit the power of narrative. This is not only a book about a great storyteller, but there have to be stories about the storyteller.

The thing about Drew Goddard and Mike Schur is that they are legit geniuses, and they love storytelling. They love creating worlds, love messing with the audience; they love doing things that we don't expect. To get to be a part of that is too good to be true.

It's a cliche to say this now, but to me, 'The Sopranos' is like Dickens. It's able to take this very focused look at something but make it epic and profound.

The true novelist is one who understands the work as a continuous poem, is a myth-maker, and the wonder of the art resides in the endless different ways of telling a story.

what storyteller is adequate to her story? The story carries us along, bottles on the tide, each with our secret mesage and the fervent hope that it does not turn out to be blank.

I achieved perfection, my type of perfection - visual storytelling. Storytelling was my style.

I would say that Pixar is doing for animation what Chaplin did for film, infusing it with heart and characters that you care about and stories that you lose yourself in. They are similar revolutionaries and changing a medium.

You usually get one or the other, you get someone who knows how to tell a story but they don't necessarily know about light and camera and rhythm, or you get someone who can make beautiful images but they can't necessarily tell a great story. He does both and I think he's going to be one of the film-makers that our time is remembered for.

You just have to learn to get really good at choosing your moments and making sure that your story isn't overwhelmed by the effects, and that your emotional storyline is what's driving the train.