Storytelling Norms Quotes

The thing about fantasy - there are certain things you just don't do in fantasy.

Those same people, when they leave the theater, when they look behind the curtains they are curious about their neighbors, they can guess if their neighbors are siblings or a couple, how old they are, what their occupation is. They are curious about each other and they can understand each other without being fed information. Why should it be different in cinema?

That’s the thing with the young these days, isn’t it? They watch too many happy endings. Everything has to be wrapped up, with a smile and a tear and a wave. Everyone has learned, found love, seen the error of their ways, discovered the joys of monogamy, or fatherhood, or filial duty, or life itself. In my day, people got shot at the end of films, after learning only that life is hollow, dismal, brutish, and short.

The whole 'starting with stories, ending with novels' thing, it's probably too ingrained in the industry and the psyche to change it.

If you write genre fiction, you follow the rules, and you have to follow them because readers expect that.

I'd say 50 on men is like 33 on women in Hollywood. The standards - it's just the way we do our storytelling. And I hope it will change, because I think it's dumb.

There's something to be said for a likable character, but fiction has a way of upending our ordinary standards.

Allowing alternative narrative modes in popular entertainment may seem obvious, yet when you turn a pilot into the people upstairs and the main character isn't after what she wants by the top of page two, you get treated as if you've failed at writing.

It goes against the American storytelling grain to have someone in a situation he can't get out of, but I think this is very usual in life.

I think there are certain tenets set in place for all different types on genres. For thrillers, women usually die first. I can't say exactly why, and it's kind of a bummer... But I also can't explain why the wallflower girl in the romantic comedy always gets the guy in the end. That's just the way those movies go.