Plot Quotes - Page 3

• When evil men plot, good men must plan. When evil men burn and bomb, good men must build and bind. When evil men shout ugly words of hatred, good men must commit themselves to the glories of love.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Life Changing, Men, Evil

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• Every search has its own momentum. It is why a search makes such an excellent plot for a film or story.

  Nan Fairbrother

  Momentum, Stories, Film

  Nan Fairbrother (1965). “The House”

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• Storytelling is ultimately a creative act of pattern recognition. Through characters, plot and setting, a writer creates places where previously invisible truths become visible. Or the storyteller posits a series of dots that the reader can connect.

  Douglas Coupland

  Character, Creative, Patterns

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• I don't have a name and I don't have a plot. I have the typewriter and I have white paper and I have me, and that should add up to a novel.

  William Saroyan

  Typewriters, Names, White

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• We read novels because we need stories; we crave them; we can’t live without telling them and hearing them. Stories are how we make sense of our lives and of the world. When we’re distressed and go to therapy, our therapist’s job is to help us tell our story. Life doesn’t come with plots; it’s messy and chaotic; life is one damn, inexplicable thing after another. And we can’t have that. We insist on meaning. And so we tell stories so that our lives make sense.

  John Dufresne

  Jobs, Needs, Stories

  John Dufresne (2010). “Is Life Like This?: A Guide to Writing Your First Novel in Six Months”, p.277, W. W. Norton & Company

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• Language is the ticket to plot and character, after all, because both are built out of language.

  Aimee Bender

  Character, Tickets, Language

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• Real life seems to have no plots.

  Ivy Compton-Burnett

  Life, Real, Seems

  1945 Orion, no.1,'A Conversation'.

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• But keep characters in propinquity long enough and a story will always develop a plot.

  Keith Miller

  Character, Long, Stories

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• At the time I begin writing a novel, the last thing I want to do is follow a plot outline. To know too much at the start takes the pleasure out of discovering what the book is about.

  Elmore Leonard

  Book, Writing, Too Much

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• One elephant having a trunk was odd; but all elephants having trunks looked like a plot.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Elephants, Odd, Trunks

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.43, Simon and Schuster

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• The writer must always leave room for the characters to grow and change. If you move your characters from plot point to plot point, like painting by the numbers, they often remain stick figures. They will never take on a life of their own. The most exciting thing is when you find a character doing something surprising or unplanned. Like a character saying to me: ‘Hey, Richard, you may think I work for you, but I don’t. I’m my own person.’

  Richard North Patterson

  Moving, Character, Thinking

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• There are only so many plots in the world. It's how they unfold that makes them interesting.

  Lauren Beukes

  Interesting, World

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• No good opera plot can be sensible, for people do not sing when they are feeling sensible.

  W. H. Auden

  Funny, Music, People

  Quoted in Time, 29 Dec 1961.

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• If you've got a plot the size of a car or a tiny yard in Italy, you're going to be growing tomatoes and basil and celery and carrots, and everybody is still connected to the land.

  Frances Mayes

  Land, Car, Yards

  "'Tuscan Sun' author on Italy's pleasures". Interview with A. Pawlowski, www.cnn.com. March 10, 2010.

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• Plot is the knowing of destination.

  Elizabeth Bowen

  Knowing, Destination

  Elizabeth Bowen (1950). “Collected Impressions”

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• Each of us needs an adequate biography: How do I put together into a coherent image the pieces of my life? How do I find the basic plot of my story?

  James Hillman

  Together, Needs, Stories

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• If you string together a set of speeches expressive of character, and well finished in point and diction and thought, you will not produce the essential tragic effect nearly so well as with a play which, however deficient in these respects, yet has a plot and artistically constructed incidents.

  Aristotle

  Character, Play, Together

  Aristotle (2016). “Poetics”, p.22, Aristotle

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• This element of surprise or mystery — the detective element as it is sometimes rather emptily called — is of great importance in a plot. It occurs through a suspension of the time-sequence; a mystery is a pocket in time, and it occurs crudely, as in "Why did the queen die?" and more subtly in half-explained gestures and words, the true meaning of which only dawns pages ahead. Mystery is essential to a plot, and cannot be appreciated without intelligence.

  E. M. Forster

  Queens, Marching On, Appreciate

  "Aspects Of the Novel".

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• Storytelling is about two things; it's about character and plot.

  George Lucas

  Character, Two, Storytelling

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• Games, by nature, have more plot options and non-linear qualities than TV and film.

  David Duchovny

  Games, Quality, Tvs

  IGN Interview, www.ign.com. November 21, 2003.

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• When we mean to build, We first survey the plot, then draw the model; And when we see the figure of the house, Then must we rate the cost of the erection.

  William Shakespeare

  Mean, House, Cost

  'Henry IV, Part 2' (1597) act 1, sc. 3, l. [41]

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• Plot does not simply move with time, but spreads out conceptually in metaphorical space.

  John L'Heureux

  Moving, Space, Doe

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• It's not the plot [of Valley of Violence] - the plot is the reason to get all these things to happen, all these character moments to happen. It was always meant to have these two perspectives.

  Ti West

  Character, Two, Perspective

  Source: www.avclub.com

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• In silent films, quite complex plots are built around action, setting, and the actors gestures and facial expressions, with a very few storyboards to nail down specific plot points.

  Laurie R. King

  Expression, Silent Films, Nails

  "Novelist Laurie R. King talks silent film, Sherlock Holmes and arghhh – pirates!". Interview with Thomas Gladysz, blog.sfgate.com. September 5, 2011.

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• So I work hard to present the human side of my characters while not neglecting the plot.

  Jeffery Deaver

  Hard Work, Character, Sides

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