Good Storytelling Quotes & Sayings

I was a Spidey fan as a kid. I always liked the complexity and the teenaged angst that Spider-Man, Peter Parker, always had to deal with. It was kind of a deeper, darker storytelling that just good-guy-beats-bad-guy. — Jack Coleman

There's a classic element that all good Disney movies have. It really comes down to the storytelling, I think. It manages to push all of these buttons inside of us; there's a sentimentality. — Mandy Moore

Everybody loves a good story, but good storytelling doesn't come easy to everybody. It's a skill that takes a lifetime to master. So study the great stories and then go find some of your own. Your stories will get better the more you tell them. — Austin Kleon

Time, it transpires, is not so good at telling after all. — Claire North

Marjan. I have told him tales of good women and bad women, strong women and weak women, shy women and bold women, clever women and stupid women, honest women and women who betray. I'm hoping that, by living inside their skins while he hears their stories, he'll understand over time that women are not all this way or that way. I'm hoping he'll look at women as he does at men
that you must judge each of us on her own merits, and not condemn us or exalt us only because we belong to a particular sex. — Susan Fletcher

Good storytellers are always ready for the next question. — Shannon Wiersbitzky

My brand is good storytelling. I really want [my company] Hillman Grad Productions to be associated with great stories, interesting characters; things that are three-dimensional and feel honest. — Lena Waithe

And if I'm guilty of having gratuitous sex, then I'm also guilty of having gratuitous violence, and gratuitous feasting, and gratuitous description of clothes, and gratuitous heraldry, because very little of this is necessary to advance the plot. But my philosophy is that plot advancement is not what the experience of reading fiction is about. If all we care about is advancing the plot, why read novels? We can just read Cliffs Notes.
A novel for me is an immersive experience where I feel as if I have lived it and that I've tasted the food and experienced the sex and experienced the terror of battle. So I want all of the detail, all of the sensory things - whether it's a good experience, or a bad experience, I want to put the reader through it. To that mind, detail is necessary, showing not telling is necessary, and nothing is gratuitous. — George R R Martin

In these story telling moments we equip our children, with crucial solution tools for life. To deprive them of these necessary teachable moments is like denying a carpenter the tools of his trade. — Drexel Deal

Storytelling is the difference between solving a problem and creating a cause. Lists solve a problem: Here's an issue we face, let's create a pro and con list about how to solve it and then pick the best option. A cause is something that ignites people and unites people. That is what a good story does: It creates a cause. — Jeanne Liedtka

Really good 'hard' novels - say, Wolf Hall - yield, if you read them carefully, the information you need when you need it, in order to follow their paths. But there is a point at which subtle storytelling maneuvers outmaneuver their own intelligibility. — Daniel Menaker

I think that good storytelling of any kind does promote a humility in that it encourages you to see the world the way that other people see it. — Jonathan Dee

Good storytelling is harder than it sounds, but the easy part is that everyone has the ability to do it ... Tap into it. — Peter Guber

I love a good 2,000 year old storytelling fresco! — Joy Baer

As writers, we must keep throwing problems at our characters. Conflict is the heart of good storytelling. Hiking in nature along a twisting trail can remind us what a good story feels like. It's the opposite of a treadmill - or an interstate highway. — Kate Klise

Good writing is true writing. If a man is making a story up it will be true in proportion to the amount of knowledge of life that he has and how conscientious he is; so that when he makes something up it is as it would truly be. — Ernest Hemingway,

Good storytelling for me is not so much technical expertise, which I know is applauded often; it's actually freshness of approach. It does mean you sometimes stumble and fall and make a horrible mess of things in seeking that freshness, but you should always keep trying to do that. — Danny Boyle

This is the secret of good storytelling: to lie, but to keep the arithmetic sound. A storyteller, like any other sort of enthusiastic liar, is on an unpredictable adventure. His initial lie, his premise, will suggest many new lies of its own. The storyteller must choose among them, seeking those which are most believable, which keep the arithmetic sound. Thus does a story generate itself. — Kurt Vonnegut

If you don't think screenwriting is a work of art, good luck in your life without a soul. — A.D. Posey

Nothing unleashes curiosity in an audience like good storytelling. Nothing inspires storytelling, in turn, like the results of curiosity. — Brian Grazer

Maia Sharp is one of America's great singer-songwriters. Her storytelling runs profound and
deep while honoring a pop tradition that urges you to sing along and feel good. Maia sings with
an angelic voice that's shrouded in stark realism and a healthy dose of cynicism ... it's an exotic
cocktail! — Don Was

You have to think about good storytelling and characters first. Then hopefully, the rest of that stuff will follow, some more than others. But if you don't have a good film and strong characters, then you don't have anything down the road. — Pete Docter

Zac dangled his legs off the edge of the building, hanging onto every word I said as though I were some old time bard telling an epic war tale. I tried to be as detailed as possible, and I knew that I was doing a good job when he'd lean back and shut his eyes. He'd breathe slowly and watch the pictures that I painted for him with my words. He'd smile, not a cunning toothy one, but a sincere smile that comes only from being truly happy. I'd sit across from him and just watch his reactions. We could be up there for hours. I would see the sunset across his face and be as captivated with his skin's changing colours as he was with my everyday stories. That's when I learned to dislike winters. — Ashley Newell

The L Word reaffirmed that good storytelling has a way of creating community. Fans everywhere have been connecting with each other online, in public and at home-viewing parties. — Jennifer Beals

A good picture book can almost be whistled ... All have their own melodies behind the storytelling. — Margaret Wise Brown

[I]f you set out to mention everything you would never be done, and that's what counts, to be done, to have done. Oh, I know, even when you mention only a few of the things there are you do not get done either, I know, I know. But it's a change of muck. And if all muck is the same muck that doesn't matter, it's good to have a change of muck, to move from one heap to another, from time to time, fluttering you might say, like a butterfly, as if you were ephemeral. — Samuel Beckett

If I am a fan of my own music, which I am, I want to hear the best Madchild I can hear. What am I missing? I sort of had a good talk with some close friends of mine that I really respect and look up to in music as well and we all just came to the conclusion, just some more storytelling songs of things I have gone through. — Shane Bunting

History is full of blank spaces, but good stories, invariably, are not. — Sara Sheridan

The synopsis looked good,
the cover looked nice,
you opened the book,
and began a new life.
You found a new home,
you met some new friends,
you kept on reading,
hoping it would never end.
You danced through the pages,
you sang out the words,
you felt all their joy,
and all their pain and hurt.

The pages cut your fingers,
the words cut your heart,
like the author had a knife,
and was tearing your soul apart.
You laughed with the characters,
and with them you cried,
you fell in love with them, too,
and with them you died,
and when the book reached its end,
and your broken heart couldn't heal,
you suddenly realized that
It's not real — Unknown

I thought I was going to be a ballet dancer for awhile there. I had a good teacher at Interlochen, this arts' academy in Michigan, who taught me the importance of storytelling, and I really responded to that. It seemed like a long shot, but I always play the long odds. — Benjamin Walker

Good food warms the heart and feeds the soul. — A.D. Posey

Maybe that's why Jesus was so fond of parables: Nothing describes the indescribable like a good yarn. — Cathleen Falsani

I love comedy. I love to make people laugh. (But) anything that's telling a good story makes me happy. So, I just like to be part of the storytelling process. — Teryl Rothery

Everybody has a wicked side, whether they are six or sixty, and yet so often storytelling draws a sharp line between good and evil. — Christopher Meledandri

To me good storytelling is about journeys. It's about people's journeys, people's discoveries and how they deal with those discoveries; circumstances that put people in different situations. — Scott Cohen

There will always be reservations, things one must leave out, events one can't explain without handing over a full map of one's life, unfolding it, making clear that all the lines and contours stand for long days and nights when things were bad or good, or when things were too small to be described at all: when things just were. This is a life. — Colm Toibin

I think that if you have a knack for storytelling, and you work really hard at it, you'll have a chance to tap into something deep. But the fact remains that good sentences are hard won. Any writer worth a lick knows constructing a sentence, a paragraph, or a chapter is hard work. — Adam Ross

Honestly, I don't try to guess at what most people want. I don't think I'd guess right, and I just think that that's not a good recipe for storytelling. I try to write what I like, what I think my friends would like. — Aaron Sorkin

Sometimes I just think that there are more things to be said to make the audience understand what I'm trying to do more. When I'm singing, I don't want you to just hear the melody. I want you to relive the story, because most of the songs have pretty good storytelling. — B.B. King

While some people are good at painting, playing an instrument or singing, I have been told more than once I am good at storytelling. I hope that you enjoy my stories as I recall them. — Eric Arrouze

There were good places and bad places to tell stories and there were of course stories that could not be told in any place on earth and these were reserved for heaven. — Gerald Hausman

Growing up in Ireland, there never seemed to be the notion that children should be seen and not heard. We all looked forward to mealtimes when we'd sit around the table and talk about our days. Storytelling and long, rambling conversations were considered good things. — Maeve Binchy

Our parents tell us the story of our beginning and they have total control over it
they know they've changed it, and we know they've changed it, but we just let them. They massage the details to reflect who we are now, so that there will be a sense to it: you are this because that. We gave you a blanket with birdies on it and now you're a pilot, how lovely! All so that we think of ourselves as being in ... not just a story, but a good story. One written in full command of their craft. Someone who abides by the contract with the audience, even if the audience is us. Everyone loves a system. Everyone relaxes. — Catherynne M Valente

Stories in themselves are not automatically good; it has to be the right kind of story told by the right kind of person. — Douglas Wilson

The most amazing thing for me is that every single person who sees a movie, not necessarily one of my movies, brings a whole set of unique experiences. Now, through careful manipulation and good storytelling, you can get everybody to clap at the same time, to hopefully laugh at the same time, and to be afraid at the same time. — Steven Spielberg

I always thought storytelling was like juggling [ ... ] You keep a lot of different tales in the air, and juggle them up and down, and if you're good you don't drop any. — Salman Rushdie

I'm not really devoted or specified towards any specific genre at all. I really like it all. There's good storytelling in all the genres, you know. I just want to tell good stories and do good work. — Angela Bettis

Good storytelling appeals to me - good writing. — Sanaa Lathan

When I get tired of new clunky writing, I resort to old fashioned story tellers, like Wilkie Collins. — Sonia Rumzi

Good story' means something worth telling that the world wants to hear. Finding this is your lonely task ... But the love of a good story, of terrific characters and a world driven by your passion, courage, and creative gifts is still not enough. Your goal must be a good story well told. — Robert McKee

With The Good Lieutenant, Whitney Terrell has unwound the myths of one of our most encrusted literary forms - the war novel - and remade it to be humane and honest, glowingly new and true. Terrell knows his facts on the ground, but this is emphatically, triumphantly a work of imagination and literary ingenuity. It opens in conflagration - everything having gone wrong for Lieutenant Emma Fowler in one explosive instant - and from there the mystery of how we got to this disastrous moment unfolds backwards, Memento-like, as we watch Emma become more innocent, her life more full of hope and possibility, with each day less of war that she has experienced. This is brilliant, bold, heartbreaking storytelling for material that demands nothing less. — Adam Johnson

I Write books for the little girl in the adult woman who some man told she was not good enough. Let us dismantle the notion that a woman cannot be free with her sexuality or that she needs a man to make her complete. This one is for the little girls with hearts on their sleeves. — Crystal Evans

Woodrell's storytelling is as melodic, jangly and energetic as a good banjo riff ... Sammy Barlach's story is a tragedy, but the telling of it is a pleasure. — Valerie Sayers

An author must learn the principles of good storytelling only in order to write better from the heart. — Uri Shulevitz

The marketplace tells us that good, visceral storytelling has a place. But there are lots of questions about the format that stories take. — Paolo Bacigalupi

The kind of people that love 'The Rocketeer' are the kind of people that love good storytelling and innocence and a better world, so to speak, so they're almost always nice people to bump into. — Billy Campbell

Good storytelling lets the audience relive events in the present so they can understand the forces, choices, and emotions that led the character to do what he did. — John Truby

I've thought and thought, but there's no other way to give you the truth except to hide it in a story and let you find your own way inside. All stories contain a truth if you look hard enough - but it might not be a good truth. — Kirsty Logan

A thrilling story can be dull if told badly, but even the most mundane event can be elevated into a tale of epic scale by a good storyteller. — Johnny Rich

We need stories in order to understand ourselves, for good or bad, to be inspired or horrified, it's how we cope with being human and how we decide what type of person we will become. — Lily Graham

The best stories proceed from a mysterious truth-seeking impulse that narrative has when revised extensively; they are complex and baffling and ambiguous; they tend to make us slower to act, rather than quicker. They make us more humble, cause us to empathize with people we don't know, because they help us imagine these people, and when we imagine them - if the storytelling is good enough - we imagine them as being, essentially, like us. If the story is poor, or has an agenda, if it comes out of a paucity of imagination or is rushed, we imagine those other people as essentially unlike us: unknowable, inscrutable, incontrovertible. — George Saunders

She wondered what it was about storytelling that made people want it almost as much as food and water, even more so in bad times than good. Movies had never drawn more patrons than during the Great Depression. Book sales often improved in a recession. The need went beyond a mere desire for entertainment and distraction from one's troubles. It was more profound and mysterious than that. — Dean Koontz

That is the power of a good story. It can encourage you, it can make you laugh, it can bring you joy. It will make you think, it will tap innto your hidden emotions, and it can make you cry. The power of a story can also bring about healing, give you peace, and change your life! (p.15) — Jeff Dixon

Shakespeare is repeated around the world in different languages, just because it's good storytelling. — Cary Fukunaga

Part of the power of all storytelling is reassurance, offering hope to those sat in the darkness, that good can succeed and wrongdoing fail. — Charles Sturridge

Your first film is always your best film, in a way. There's something about your first film that you never ever get back to, but you should always try. It's that slight sense of not knowing what you're doing, because the technical skills you learn - especially if you have a film that works, that has some kind of success - are beguiling. The temptation is to use them again, and they're not necessarily good storytelling techniques. — Danny Boyle

Lying in small doses makes a good storyteller great. — Bryan Way

Good writing is about finding and exploiting anecdotes that resonate with the reader. In storytelling, it's OK if you only make one point, as long as it's a good one. — Ben Clymer

The teacher always used me as an example to the class of good English and good storytelling because we all had to write the same stories. But she used to make me go out front - which I hated - and read my story to the class and I would get huge applause. Not because of who I was but because they truly enjoyed the stories I wrote. — Michael Jackson

I really do think of it in moral terms. I think that we can't kid ourselves that the storytelling impulse is innocent and does nothing but bring good to the world. — Lynn Coady

Every ounce of his soul tells him this will make a good story to tell his friends - an anecdote in the biography, an incident in the life. But part of the sorrow he feels - and it is that - comes from the distance he sees between himself and the storytelling, the hole that has ripped open between the here and the there. — David Levithan

But books were full of stories and stories were full of lies and lies hurt Jesus's feelings, so I didn't know what to think. I blamed my family. They were the ones who taught me so much about telling stories, and how not to do it, and then, in inspired moments of surprise, how to tell one so good you forgot what day it was, and I liked forgetting what day it was, so I made certain life choices that would allow me to get paid to forget what day it was and teach others to forget what day it was, which is, after all, what I think heaven probably is: the whole world, forgetting what day it is. You have to, I bet, with an endless supply of them. — Harrison Scott Key

I had the most incredible English and literature teachers in school, and it really influenced my love of storytelling. It's what made me excited to study journalism in college. I love editorials and documentaries. All of that came from being given the opportunity to lose myself in good writing when I was a kid. — Sophia Bush

Good storytelling is one thing rural whites and Indians have in common. But native Americans have learned through harsh necessity that people who survive encroachment by another culture need story to survive. And a storytelling tradition is something Plains people share with both ancient and contemporary monks; we learn our ways of being and reinforce our values by telling tales about each other. — Kathleen Norris

Outside Styx's apartment was not the first time Rochester and I had met, or would it be the last. We first encountered each other at Haworth House in Yorkshire when my mind was young and the barrier between reality and make-believe had not yet hardened into the shell that cocoons us in adult life. The barrier was soft, pliable and, for a moment, thanks to the kindness of a stranger and the power of a good storytelling voice, I made the short journey
and returned. — Jasper Fforde

That guy in the corner. Never tells the truth, as a matter of principle. Why answer a question, he says, if you can tell a good story instead? — Pete McCarthy

If I really knew how to do good storytelling, I would be a writer. Mystery is not a huge part of it ... It's tension, it's relationships. I think it's a struggle. — Scott Cohen

While I don't like violent programs per se, I do like good storytelling, which made me a fan of shows like Breaking Bad and American Horror Story. — Hank Stuever

I think George R. R. Martin made fantasy grow up. He brought a level of reality into the storytelling where you realize the good guys don't always win and anyone can die, because that's how life works. Bringing that level of reality into the story I think forced the genre to mature in a lot of ways that it hadn't prior. — Peter V. Brett

The more intelligent the storytelling becomes and the deeper the character development, people will realize in film and television, like they do in real life, that human beings possess both good and bad. — Robert LaSardo

And their days make no story for they were good and joyful and without event — Tanith Lee

All of the elements of the comic way tend to spread to others, insinuating joy where it was previously absent. Conversation has a way of leaping among persons, as it does at parties and celebratory gatherings. Storytelling always begets storytelling. It is difficult to watch others at play without wanting to join them. This is not only a human phenomenon, for researchers have consistently noted that animals at play are often imitated by other animals. So wherever it is possible to initiate a playful activity, it will have a good chance of replicating itself through other parts of the system. — Joseph Rusling Meeker

The announcement that you are going to tell a good story (and the chuckle that precedes it) is always a dangerous opening. — Margot Asquith

If you do really good storytelling, things that people also might anticipate and that they might have seen before - there's a reason we go back to stories that we love - so, even if there is a familiarity, if you can do it a different way and hopefully do it well enough, you actually feel the satisfaction of that anticipation given back to you. — Kimberly Peirce

Specificity is what makes good storytelling, and good storytelling is what makes money, and making money is then what encourages new producers to invest in different stories about Asians. — Constance Wu

Required for good fiction: character, conflict, change through time. And if you're really blessed, you get resolution. But life doesn't usually work out that way. — Ted Conover

Eminem. My son was listening to that and I was like, "What is that junk?" Then I started listening and I thought, You know, that kid is pretty good. It's the storytelling. — Larry Bird

Storytelling is storytelling. Good stories need compelling characters and interesting conflicts. That's the bottom line no matter what medium you're writing for. — D.J. MacHale

Sadly, many storytellers and artists are still addicted to the old delusions (happy is boring, evil is interesting) about the risks of good mental health. Even those who don't view peace of mind as a threat to their creative power often believe that it's a rare commodity attained through dumb luck ... .It's possible to define a more supple variety of happiness that does not paralyze the will or sap ambition ... .the number one trait of happy people is a serious determination to be happy. Bliss is a habit you can cultivate, in other words, not an accident. — Rob Brezsny

Entertain, yes. That goes without saying. But a good writer does that automatically, it's built into the machine. Telling a thumpingly good, mesmerizing story is what one does without question. But beyond that, any writer worth his/her hire knows that all writing, one way or another, is subversive. It is guerrilla warfare against the status quo. — Harlan Ellison

Good storytelling is humanity's great connector, and it just might keep the world from eating itself. — James Genn

There are books full of great writing that don't have very good stories. Read sometimes for the story ... don't be like the book-snobs who won't do that. Read sometimes for the words
the language. Don't be like the play-it-safers who won't do that. But when you find a book that has both a good story and good words, treasure that book. — Stephen King

I just hope that readers and publishers continue to appreciate good writing and good storytelling in all their various forms. And I hope that people continue to read books, even though we have so many other options for entertainment. — Karen Thompson Walker

Lies are just another kind of storytelling, but with the very distinct and enlivening motive of desperation. Since writers are by nature desperate creatures, they usually do a pretty good (or pretty awful, but always interesting) job of lying. — John Hodgman

We can tell people abstract rules of thumb which we have derived from prior experiences, but it is very difficult for other people to learn from these. We have difficulty remembering such abstractions, but we can more easily remember a good story. Stories give life to past experience. Stories make the events in memory memorable to others and to ourselves. This is one of the reasons why people like to tell stories. — Roger C. Shank

But as she continued and finished her tale, I could tell that her heart was elsewhere, and when she excused herself to go to bed, she left without saying good night. After that, the princesses in her stories were always beautiful. Always. — Kelly Barnhill

Nowadays I'm really cranky about comics. Because most of them are just really, really poorly written soft-core. And I miss good old storytelling. And you know what else I miss? Super powers. Why is it now that everybody's like "I can reverse the polarity of your ions!" Like in one big flash everybody's Doctor Strange. I like the guys that can stick to walls and change into sand and stuff. I don't understand anything anymore. And all the girls are wearing nothing, and they all look like they have implants. Well, I sound like a very old man, and a cranky one, but it's true. — Joss Whedon

But there was a catalyst, an event, a moment which changed everything and not just for us. This is good for storytelling but bad for decision making, and it is frightening to look back and realize, were it not for that moment, all of our lives would have been so different. maybe that's revisionist history. Maybe it's me making origin myths. But I can't shake the conviction that Jason's boyfriend's friend's ex-boyfriend's girlfriend changed the world. — Laurie Frankel

A good preview makes you can't wait to see the whole movie. — A.D. Posey

Now it is a strange thing, but things that are good to have and days that are good to spend are soon told about, and not much to listen to; while things that are uncomfortable, palpitating, and even gruesome, may make a good tale, and take a deal of telling anyway. — J.R.R. Tolkien