Plot Device Quotes & Sayings

I am a wordy writer, and often churn out pages on end without advancing the plot a jot. Hence I try to take my cue from a childhood impatience with any device that doesn't get somewhere. Even in his sprightly youth, Clippity had a problem with running in place - just like my first drafts - when the surface was too slick. As a kid, I was ingenious enough to smear green Plasticine on his rear hooves. Thus I discovered the importance of traction, as handy a concept in literature as for wind-up toys. — Lionel Shriver

According to the media, trans women were subject to pain and punch lines. Instead of proclaiming that I was not a plot device to be laughed at, I spent my younger years internalizing and fighting those stereotypes. — Janet Mock

A two-hour movie tends to be a plot-delivery device; you tend to have to introduce all the characters, say what the goal is, and then get there with a setback, but that's not really how life is or what a story necessarily wants to be. — Noah Hawley

I believe no satirist could breathe this air. If another Juvenal or Swift could rise up among us tomorrow, he would be hunted down. If you have any knowledge of our literature, and can give me the name of any man, American born and bred, who has anatomised our follies as a people, and not as this or that party; and who has escaped the foulest and most brutal slander, the most inveterate hatred and intolerant pursuit; it will be a strange name in my ears, believe me. — Charles Dickens

We believe the explanation we hear last. It's one of the ways in which narrative influences our perception of truth. We crave finality, and end to interpretation, not seeing that this too, the tying up of all loose ends in the last chapter, is only a storytelling ruse. The device runs contrary to experience, wouldn't you say? Time never simplifies - it unravels and complicates. Guilty parties show up everywhere. The plot does nothing but thicken. — Michelle De Kretser

Cassidy brings something beautiful to me from the outside. Aimee brings something beautiful up from the depths of my insides.
"I can't dance like Cassidy," she says.
"Yeah, but you dance like Aimee. And that's perfect. — Tim Tharp

One of the general patterns of good (i.e., striking and memorable) writing is the effect of repetition. If you use a certain element - a plot device, an image, a noticeable phrase - once, readers may or may not notice it consciously, but it doesn't disturb the flow of their reading. If you use that element twice, they won't notice it consciously - but they will notice it subconsciously, and it will add to the resonance of the writing or to their sense of depth and involvement (and if it's a plot device, it will heighten the dramatic tension). But if you use that element three times, everybody will notice it the third time you do it. — Diana Gabaldon

In the real world, babysitting is a groovy way for young people to learn responsibility (and earn a little pocket money).
In the Terrorverse, it's a plot device used to kill teenagers. — Seth Grahame-Smith

Sometimes, by using the most over-the-top, ridiculous plot device you can imagine, you get some interesting little conflicts and cool things that you might not otherwise have a chance to explore. — G. Willow Wilson

Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired and success achieved. — Helen Keller

I think of a plot, I think of an idea, and then I wonder, How can I get that onto the stage? ... Whatever devices you use should always be there to serve the theme. If the theme has been overtaken by the device, then something's wrong. — Alan Ayckbourn

Historical periodization always tells a story. It is a narrative device for putting meaning into the flux of historical process - creating protagonists, heroes, pace, and plot. For this reason, the division of history into periods always carries an ideological load, and it is a methodological imperative to approach questions of broad historical periodization with this in mind. — James Ferguson

I reached out for something else and found it: the red croquet mallet, just occurring there on the ground like some easy device, some plot element stashed there for the big finale. — Daniel Handler

I'm going to marry Prince William! I'll get all Kate Middleton's cute coats! — Claudia Gray

A deus ex machina will never appear in real life so you best make other arrangements. — Marisha Pessl

Kyle is my best friend. Why would I risk screwing that up?"
"Mackenzie Catherine Dobson, have you learned nothing from romantic comedies? Do I need to make a trip to the video store?" Tess set her fork down and sighed. "'We're just friends' is the oldest plot device in the book. All it really means is that you're just friends until one of you get the balls to do something about all the unresolved tension. — Kathleen Peacock

How is your father?" she asks disinterestedly.
"A contrivance," I mutter. "A plot device. — Bret Easton Ellis

We are simply surviving, barely enough energy to get through each day. Not enough to make the changes we long to make. Not enough to be the ones we know we were born to be. We feel it in our bodies, so heavy and stiff. Our minds are overwhelmed, attention is strained, and then there is the depression. Our hearts ache for things we dare not even wish for, as the money is not there and when it is, we fear a future without it. Our — Christy Diane Farr

We actually needed the memory - if you see the film - as a very different kind of a plot device of revealing some information to our main character. So we chose to represent it as these sort of beautiful little snow globes, which kind of, weirdly, that's the way we think of memories - at least, most of the folks that we talked to. You think of these memories as being very pure and absolute and unchanging. That's not actually real life. — Pete Docter

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a completely ad hoc plot device. — David Langford

The world is now multicultural the same way the world is round. It's not a selling point, it's not a 'quirky' feature, it's not a cynical marketing ploy, it's not an artistic statement, it's not even a plot device. It's a fact, like seedless grapes. — Zadie Smith

In the creative industries, there are few things more exciting than a zinger - a thought, idea, line, plot device - anything really, that just totally works in a fundamentally new and fresh way. It's like a uniquely lovely melody or a new taste idea in cooking. Something special, something new, something wonderful. They're also very rare. — Jasper Fforde

It won't be long before the Facebook generation will be rejected by the non-Facebook people who will be rejected by the post-Facebook people. Everyone will be on their own planet. — Sigourney Weaver

But, you know, it's still a drag to get your picture taken when you're eating a sandwich. It's a downer. — Keanu Reeves

If, technologically, it is possible to make an impenetrable device or system where the encryption is so strong that there's no key - there's no door at all - then how do we apprehend the child pornographer? How do we solve or disrupt a terrorist plot? — Barack Obama

Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter...No Women's Bathroom — Katsuhiro Otomo

It's just about trying to find material where I'm doing more than just being a plot device. I want to actually get to do scenes that go to interesting places and are challenging to me. — Mary Elizabeth Winstead

YOU are your love of a lifetime. — Steve Maraboli

It's an interesting plot device to enter in a third wheel - it always helps raise the stakes for all parties involved. But often, those characters can be one-dimensional. — Michael Trucco