Truby Quotes & Sayings

time. Take a lot of it at the beginning of the writing process. I'm not talking about hours or even days. I'm talking about weeks. Don't make the amateurish mistake of getting a hot premise and immediately running off to write scenes. You'll get twenty to thirty pages into the story and run into a dead end you can't escape. — John Truby

The multistrand plot is clearly a much more simultaneous form of storytelling, emphasizing the group, or the minisociety, and how the characters compare. — John Truby

I discovered John Truby ten years ago when a friend told me about his screenwriting course. I studied Truby's principles for a year and
using them
I wrote the first draft of The Thieves of Ostia in two weeks. I go back to his teachings before each new book I write. Each time I study Truby, I learn something new. — Caroline Lawrence

No individual element in your story, including the hero, will work unless you first create it and define it in relation to all the other elements. — John Truby

To empathize with someone means to care about and understand him. That's why the trick to keeping the audience's interest in a character, even when the character is not likable or is taking immoral actions, is to show the audience the hero's motive. — John Truby

Subplot is not one of the twenty-two steps because it's not usually present and because it is really a plot of its own with its own structure. But it's a great technique. It improves the character, theme, and texture of your story. On the other hand, it slows the desire line - the narrative drive. So you have to decide what is most important to you. — John Truby

Any character who goes after a desire and is impeded is forced to struggle (otherwise the story is over.) And that struggle makes him change. So the ultimate goal of the dramatic code, and of the storyteller, is to present a change in a character or to illustrate why that change did not occur. — John Truby

Our life depends on the kind of thoughts we nurture. If our thoughts are peaceful, calm, meek, and kind, then that is what our life is like. If our attention is turned to the circumstances in which we live, we are drawn into a whirlpool of thoughts and can have neither peace nor tranquility. — Thaddeus Of Vitovnica

But Mike was not a Layercake device; Beria had misdirected his scientific staff. In time this led to Beria's ultimate dilemma. — Thomas C. Reed

Desire never stops. Equilibrium is temporary. The self-revelation is never simple, and it cannot guarantee the hero a satisfying life from that day forward. since a great story is always a living thing, its ending is no more final and certain than any other part of the story. — John Truby

He laid her down on the mattress, his eyes never leaving her charmingly disheveled form as he methodically stripped off his clothing. First his gloves, one by one, then his coat, already rumpled by his ardor.
He caught her eyes, dark and large and filled with wonder, and he smiled, slowly and with satisfaction. "You've never seen a naked man before, have you?" he murmured.
She shook her head.
"Good." He leaned forward and plucked one of her slippers from her foot. "You'll never see another."
-Anthony & Kate — Julia Quinn

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

Christmas, so joyfully celebrated within our hearts and within the hearts of countless others. — Eleesha

Step 1: Write Something That May Change Your Life — John Truby

Audiences love both the feeling part (reliving the life) and the thinking part (figuring out the puzzle) of a story. Every good story has both. — John Truby

The story world isn't a copy of life as it is. It's life as human beings imagine it could be. It is human life condensed and heightened so that the audience can gain a better understanding of how life itself works. — John Truby

There's that thing about the '80s, the '40s and the '60s, and the '30s, the '50s and the '70s. Something about those odd decades in this century that weren't too pleasant. — Paul Kantner

I'm big on story structure. I studied with John Truby, who mapped out story by means of moral wants and needs, and that's what I do. Hey, so does John Irving. — Caroline Leavitt

In the vast majority of stories, a character with weaknesses struggles to achieve something and ends up changed (positively or negatively) as a result. — John Truby

Wear your knowledge like your watch - in you pocket - and don't pull it out just for show. — Lord Chesterfield

Failure leaves open a door for us to try, and try again. — Robert M. Hensel