Plot Quotes - Page 32

• With six weeks' worth of recuperation time, you'll also be able to see any glaring holes in the plot or character development. And listen--if you spot a few of these big holes, you are forbidden to feel depressed about them or to beat up on yourself. Screw-ups happen to the best of us.

  Stephen King

  Character, Screw Ups, Development

  Stephen King (2002). “On Writing”, p.214, Simon and Schuster

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• I'm more interested in plot than theme, but I hope my values find their way into my stories: kindness, sympathy, effort, and humor!

  Gail Carson Levine

  Kindness, Effort, Stories

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• When you're reading a novel, I think the reason you care about how any given plot turns out is that you take it as a data point in the big story of how the world works. Does such-and-such a kind of guy get the girl in the end? Does adultery ever bring happiness? How do winners become winners?

  Elif Batuman

  Girl, Book, Reading

  "The Rumpus Interview With Elif Batuman". Interview with Sean Carman, therumpus.net. April 25, 2012.

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• I've always read suspense, so raising the stakes to life and death situations in my romance plots seemed natural.

  JoAnn Ross

  Life And Death, Romance, Suspense

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• I think this is the first time I've altered a book based on what you guys told me. So it's an occasion! Soon I'll be putting up polls to choose between plots, and then it's a short stop to accepting anonymous contributions and stapling them together while I sip margaritas on the deck of a Pacific cruise ship.

  Max Barry

  Book, Thinking, Guy

  "Retrospective #6: Reviewing the Future". Personal blog, maxbarry.com. August 24, 2005.

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• Some artists, such as Jack Kirby, need no plot at all. I mean I'll just say to Jack, "Let's let the next villain be Dr. Doom" ... or I may not even say that. He may tell me. And then he goes home and does it. He's so good at plots, I'm sure he's a thousand times better than I. He just makes up the plots for these stories. All I do is a little editing ... I may tell him that he's gone too far in one direction or another. Of course, occasionally I'll give him a plot, but we're practically both the writers on the things.

  Stan Lee

  Home, Mean, Artist

  Stan Lee, Jeff McLaughlin (2007). “Stan Lee: conversations”, Univ Pr of Mississippi

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• In the late 1980s, Soviets were allowed to keep the wealth they created by raising vegetables on their garden plots. Although these plots composed only about 2% of the agricultural lands in the Soviet Union, they produced 25% of the food! When Soviets kept the wealth they created, they produced almost 16 times more than when it was taken from them at gunpoint, if necessary!

  Mary Ruwart

  Taken, Garden, Vegetables

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• Do we really have to wander around apologizing for enjoying plot, just because James Wood and a few dozen other arch-aesthetes sniff at it? It's like being careful not to sing pop songs in the shower because some guy in the local alt-weekly is a music snob.

  Patrick Nielsen Hayden

  Song, Guy, Dozen

  "Oh No Lev Grossman No". nielsenhayden.com. August 30, 2009.

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• The solution to the novel's legal problem is a satisfyingly intricate one, and nobody will want his money back on the plot. But the echoes that will remain in your mind after you've finished Reversible Errors will mainly have to do with the novel's other elements.

  Wendy Lesser

  Errors, Echoes, Mind

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• Plot is unimportant. Family is everything, and 'Furious 7' is a blast.

  Drew McWeeny

  Family Is Everything, Blast, Furious

  "Review: ‘Furious 7’ takes over for unforgettable night at the SXSW Film Festival" by Drew McWeeny, uproxx.com. March 16, 2015.

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• The character can never be static from book to book. People might think you just come up with a new plot and stick this guy in. Well, he has to be as new as the plot every time.

  Michael Connelly

  Book, Character, Thinking

  "Crime writer Michael Connelly". The Tavis Smiley Show, www.pbs.org. December 7, 2012.

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• I know you can't see it, not you, Ed, but maybe if I tell you the whole plot you'll understand it this once, because even now I want you to see it. I don't love you anymore, of course I don't, but there's still something I can show you. You know I want to be a director, but you never truly see the movies in my head and that, Ed, is why we broke up.

  Daniel Handler

  Love You, Directors, Want

  Daniel Handler (2012). “Why We Broke Up”, p.7, Egmont UK

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• The difficulty in the way of writing a children's play is that Barrie was born too soon. Many people must have felt the same about Shakespeare. We who came later have no chance. What fun to have been Adam, and to have had the whole world of plots and jokes and stories at one's disposal.

  A. A. Milne

  Children, Fun, Writing

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• Plots are ... what the writer sees with.

  Eudora Welty

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• I did ... learn an important distinction in graduate school: a speculation about who had syphilis when is gossip if it's about your friends, a plot element if it's about a character in a novel, and scholarship if it's about John Keats.

  Margaret Atwood

  School, Character, Gossip

  Margaret Atwood (1984). “Second words: selected critical prose”, Beacon Press, 1984

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• The plot is not very important to me, though a novel must have one, of course. It's just a line to hang the washing on.

  Ivy Compton-Burnett

  Important, Lines, Novel

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• She gathers my half of the blankets around her and curls up against the wall. She will sleep for hours more, dreaming endless landscapes and novas of colour both gorgeous and frightening. If I stayed she would wake up and describe them to me. All the mad plot twists and surrealist imagery, so vivid to her while so meaningless to me. There was a time when I treasured listening to her, when I found the commotion in her soul bitter-sweet and lovely, but I can no longer bear it.

  Isaac Marion

  Love, Dream, Sweet

  Isaac Marion (2016). “Warm Bodies and The New Hunger: A Special 5th Anniversary Edition”, p.163, Simon and Schuster

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• I really felt sometimes like I was physically pulling the plot, and it was heavy. I'm sure it didn't look great that I was going into my dressing room at lunch.

  Shelley Long

  Lunch, Looks, Rooms

  Source: www.gq.com

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• Friendship between two women is always a plot against another one.

  Alphonse Karr

  Friendship, Two

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• When I am thickening my plots, I like to think 'What if ... What if ... ' Thus my imagination can move from the likely, which everyone can think of, to the unlikely-but-possible, my preferred plot.

  Patricia Highsmith

  Moving, Thinking, Imagination

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• Do you solemnly swear never to conceal a vital clue from the reader? Do you promise to observe seemly moderation in the use of gangs, conspiracies, Super Criminals and Lunatics and utterly and forever to forswear Mysterious Poisons unknown to science? Will you honor the King's English? ... If you fail to keep your promise, may other writers steal your plots and your pages swarm with misprints.

  Dorothy L. Sayers

  Kings, Forever, Honor

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• I have a superstition that if I talk about plot, it's like letting sand out of a hole in the bottom of a bag.

  Shirley Hazzard

  Bags, Superstitions, Sand

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• I don't know exactly why the notion of homeownership has such a grasp on the American imagination. Perhaps as descendants of landless immigrants we turn our plots into symbols of stability.

  Ellen Goodman

  Home, Imagination, Stability

  Ellen Goodman (1986). “Close to Home”, Fawcett Books

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• He who plots to hurt others often hurts himself.

  Aesop

  Hurt, Revenge

  Albert Cullum, Aesop (1972). “Aesop in the afternoon”

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• Characters should on the whole, be under rather than over articulate. What they intend to say should be more evident, more striking (because of its greater inner importance to the plot) than what they arrive at saying.

  Elizabeth Bowen

  Character, Should, Importance

  Elizabeth Bowen (1975). “Pictures and conversations”, Lane, Allen

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