Storytelling Structure Quotes

There's something exciting about weekly strips in that you're following the way the story reveals itself to the writer week by week. All the possible directions it could have taken are there; it's a kind of participatory reading that I think books discourage.

There is a kind of structure for a story that was peculiarly compelling for the radio. I thought I had invented it atom-by-atom sitting in an editing booth in Washington on M Street when I was in my 20s. Then I found out that it is one of the oldest forms of telling a story - it was the structure of a sermon.

It's very important for an audience to know where they are and why they are there in a musical. It allows them to relax and follow this form that operates in shorthand. So the economy of the form, in many respects, is why a lot of screenwriting is so sleek. Because the visuals are where the explosions happen.

I'm not a fan of endless mystery in storytelling - I like to know where the mythology's going; I like to get there in an exciting, fast-paced way - enough that there's a really clear, aggressive direction to where it's going, to pay off mystery and reward the audiences loyalty.

I have tried to remove weight, sometimes from people, sometimes from heavenly bodies, sometimes from cities; above all I have tried to remove weight from the structure of stories and from language.

Maybe it'll be like 'The Simpsons,' and everybody will remain unchanged. Maybe that's what 'Glee's about. Maybe this is kind of a stasis show. I don't know.

Even in something surreal like 'Father Ted,' everything has to logically follow, everything has to lead one to another. The moment the logic of a situation doesn't work then you might as well not bother because people have signed out.

To me, storytelling is a mystery. Especially when you're directing.

I find reading screenplays difficult, as they're only a roadmap for what a movie might end up being.

Actors become actors because they loved entertaining their family by putting on the lampshade and dancing around as a kid, ... That's not my personality. For me, the fun part of making movies is seeing it as a director sees it. I like the architecture of movies. I like knowing what's coming and working to set that up.

I would normally never set out to write a trilogy.

I think that there's a sense that procedurals, because they have more of a formula to the storytelling, it doesn't necessarily rate as high as some of the high-concept, big-idea, big-swing things that get the critics really excited.

I try to naturally keep things to a manageable storytelling length, which is about two hours, so you try to cut out anything extraneous.

The built-in form is a window frame. You can use this genre [crime fiction] to go where you want to go, and explore what you want to explore. In some ways it gives you a lot of freedom because you have a framework readers are looking for.

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

I was never conscious of my screenplays having any acts. It's all bullshit.

If you're gonna tell a story from beginning to end, I always think you have to have a great structure in a script. If it gets you excited and it's something you've never read before that's another plus. I think also with improv and that whole world of stand-up, that's a whole other organism of comedy that still needs a story, but it's more free-form. On the set, it is the combination of both those worlds coming together: a great script and an allowance to play with it.

What I took away from my 'Flashforward' experience is that when you're doing a serialized mythology show, you put your foot on the gas, and you do not take it off.

The 13-episode model lends itself to a more serialised format, which is nice and gives writers a chance to breathe some space into it.

Once I came to really understand the mechanics of three-act structure, my life got a great deal easier. It doesn't tell you how to write your book, but it helps you understand why things aren't working, or what kind of beat needs to come next.

I am not against two-heroine films.

Personally, one of the most helpful things I learned was three-act structure. For my first four or so novels, I built the structure intuitively.

The only thing that's different about doing a superhero show is that you can have your hero do things that a normal cop in a procedural can't do. But the structure of the storytelling is universal.

The pilot is a sales tool; it introduces you to the characters and might set the template for what the show is meant to be, but there's so many boxes you have to check off on a pilot that it can sort of hurt the storytelling in a way.