Storytelling Process Quotes

Orlando's a part of me. The next guy's a part of me. And the next guy's a part of me. That's all I'm trying to do, is tell cool stories that people can relate to.

One interview would lead us to another interview, which led us to another interview. We had the questions and the idea of chonicling this moment in time. But we didn't have a movie, per se. As we started interviewing people, it started to kind of define itself.

I want to tell a story and shape it all the way through to the end.

The story of Bennet Omalu is a riveting story; it's just a riveting tale. I knew from the beginning if I stayed close to that kind of storytelling and focussed on the character, then the other stuff comes along with it, and the message becomes baked into the journey.

I write a story in my head. I see the story like a movie.

One of the things I find exciting about Joan of Arc is how clearly the story of her life reveals the creation of myth, a process in which every one of us is involved - every one of us who tells stories and all those who listen, each informing the other.

It's one of the things I love about my job: it's my job to help a director tell the story, to just be willing to help.

The big moment for me was making 'All the President's Men'. It was not about Watergate or President Nixon. I wanted to focus on something I thought not many people knew about: How do journalists get the story?

Most of screenplay writing is deciding which voices you want to listen to and take on board.

Ture stories can't be told forward, only backward. We invent them from the vantage point of an ever-changing present and tell ourselves how they unfolded.

Usually with film writing I start with characters, and set about writing their story.

On the whole, stories don't write themselves.

Every stage of filmmaking's important while you're doing it, so I spend most of my time figuring out how to tell the story. I have all these stories and ideas, but it's how to tell the story.

You're torn between wanting to fill in all the spaces and knowing that's really going to screw up the screenplay. And yet, how are you going to communicate it to people who really don't understand the process?

When I sign on for a project, I'm there to give the director all the material he or she might need to tell their story, and that's the number one priority.

Plot springs from character... I've always sort of believed that these people inside me- these characters- know who they are and what they're about and what happens, and they need me to help get it down on paper because they don't type.

For me the rehearsal period is the part I most enjoy. It's the creating of the story.

There's no mastery to be had. You love the attempt. You don't master a story any more than you master a river. You feel lucky to canoe down it.

Writing for myself and writing for another artist are two very different experiences. When I handle both the story and the art, I have full control. I can endlessly tweak every word and every line.

You don't go around thinking about how characters in a movie, in the stories you make up, relate to people in general.

When I compose for any film, I always work with the story in mind.

If somebody from the past doesn't rise up from the grave and start talking to me, I haven't got a book. I have to hear that voice, the voice of the narrator. How she sounds will tell me who she is, and who she is will tell me how she will act - and that starts the plot in motion.

If you want to make a documentary you should automatically go to the fiction, and if you want to nourish your fiction you have to come back to reality.

When I journal, I write about images that I've seen that I think might make good stories. I write about things that I hear that I think I can turn into a story. I write about the story that I'm working on and where I think it might go.

I do not over-intellectualize the production process. I try to keep it simple: Tell the damned story.