What Is Plot Quotes & Sayings

I started to get nervous when people began posting, on the public newsgroups, plot suggestions for future books and speculation about how characters would develop. The Net is still new, and it is big and it is public, and has brought with it new perceptions and problems. (One minor one is that people are out driving their language on a worldwide highway without passing a test. Take the word plagiarize. I know what it means. You know what it means. Lawyers certainly know what it means. But I have seen it repeatedly used as a synonym for research, parody, and reference, as — Anonymous

When we plot the happiness of another, we unconsciously impute to the other person what is in another form the dream in which our own happiness is fulfilled. Thus by not thinking of our own happiness we make it possible for ourselves to become egotistic. — Yukio Mishima

Every story would be another story, and unrecognizable if it took up its characters and plot and happened somewhere else ... Fiction depends for its life on place. Place is the crossroads of circumstance, the proving ground of, What happened? Who's here? Who's coming? ... — Eudora Welty

While Barack Obama was making his latest pitch for a brand new, even more unsustainable entitlement at the health care 'summit,' thousands of Greeks took to the streets to riot. An enterprising cable network might have shown the two scenes on a continuous split-screen - because they're part of the same story. It's just that Greece is a little further along in the plot: They're at the point where the canoe is about to plunge over the falls. America is further upstream and can still pull for shore, but has decided, instead, that what it needs to do is catch up with the Greek canoe. — Mark Steyn

How long are you going to let yourself be dragged passively by the plot? You had flung yourself into the action, filled with adventurous impulses: and then? Your function was quickly reduced to that of one who records situations decided by others, who submits to whims, finds himself involved in events that elude his control. Then what use is your role as protagonist to you? If you continue lending yourself to this game, it means that you, too, are an accomplice of the general mystification. — Italo Calvino

Forgiveness, not for those who act in malice; those who plot with secrecy between shadows and the soul lost in the carnality of flesh ... but forgiveness for those whose circumstance renders them a slave. Whose life decisions imprisoned their fate; like an assassin sent to murder a wife. Business will always be business, we leave it once we depart this physicality and transcend into the next; however, what we cannot leave behind, is the truth of our intent. For the guilty shall be segregated from the innocent , and of the innocent, the righteous will be few — Alejandro C. Estrada

Now up and atom it's on, I was raised to be strong, and mama told me be a thug since the day I was born. The fame was a plot to try a change me, and what's strange is nobody knew my name. — Tupac Shakur

Foreshadow, plot buster or red herring ... only time will tell: P69
Cassie waited; in the evening light through the window her eyes looked huge, opaque and watchful. I knew she was giving me a chance to say, Fuck the hair clip, let's forget we ever found it. Even now the temptation, tired and profitless though it may be, is to wonder what would have happened if I had. — Tana French

We should call on the Creator to show more modesty. He created the world in a frenzy of excitement. Instead of revising his rough drafts, he had his work printed straightaway. What a lot of contradictions there are in it. What a log of typing errors, inconsistencies in the plot, passages that are too long and wordy, characters that are entirely superfluous. But it is painful and difficult to cut and trim the living cloth of a book written and published in too much of a hurry — Vasily Grossman

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

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

I'm living in this world. I'm what, a slacker? A "twentysomething"? I'm in the margins. I'm not building a wall but making a brick. Okay, here I am, a tired inheritor of the Me generation, floating from school to street to bookstore to movie theater with a certain uncertainty. I'm in that white space where consumer terror meets irony and pessimism, where Scooby Doo and Dr. Faustus hold equal sway over the mind, where the Butthole Surfers provide the background volume, where we choose what is not obvious over what is easy. It goes on ... like TV channel-cruising, no plot, no tragic flaws, no resolution, just mastering the moment, pushing forward, full of sound and fury, full of life signifying everything on any given day ... — Richard Linklater

This is what love does: It makes you want to rewrite the world. It makes you want to choose the characters, build the scenery, guide the plot. The person you love sits across from you, and you want to do everything in your power to make it possible, endlessly possible. And when it's just the two of you, alone in a room, you can pretend that this is how it is, this is how it will be. — David Levithan

Younger people have greatest fears. Why is that? Because they don't know the plot. They don't know their own individual plot ... they don't know what's going to happen to them. — Margaret Atwood

First comes an idea. Then, characters begin to evolve out of the landscape of that idea. And then, finally, characters dominate: plot is simply a function of what these people might do or be. Everything has to flow from their personalities; otherwise it will not be emotionally engaging, or plausible. — Robert Harris

Knowing Chris Bennett's Writing as I do, I expected Only Superhuman to have an imaginative plot and a compelling superheroine in Emry Blair. What I hadn't expected was for the backstory to make so much sense. Usually science is the first causality of superhero stories, tossed aside with the breezy rationalization: 'Hey, it's comics!' Only Superhuman is, to my knowledge, the first hard science superhero story. And the Story is the better for it. — Mike W. Barr

In the theater, you're so much more in charge as an actor. For better or for worse, you know what the audience is seeing. But you can be acting your socks off on film, and then you see the movie, and the camera is on the other actor, or they've cut out the lines you thought were significant, or they've adjusted the plot. So much of it is out of your control. — Susan Sarandon

There's a poetry to it, engineer's poetry ... it suggests Haverie - average, you know - certainly you have two lobes, don't you, symmetrical about the rocket's intended azimuth ... hauen, too-smashing someone with a hoe or a club ... off on a voyage of his own here, smiling at no one in particular, bringing in the popular wartime expression ab-hauen, quarterstaff technique, peasant humor, phallic comedy dating back to the ancient Greeks ... Slothrop's first impulse is to get back to what that Plas is into, but something about the man, despite obvious membership in the plot, keeps him listening ... an innocence, maybe a try at being friendly in the only way he has available, sharing what engages and runs him, a love for the Word. — Thomas Pynchon

I hate when people ask what a book is about. People who read for plot, people who suck out the story like the cream filling in an Oreo, should stick to comic strips and soap operas ... Every book worth a damn is about emotions and love and death and pain. It's about words. It's about a man dealing with life. Okay? — J.R. Moehringer

Good manners, Madam, are had these days not
For your asking, nor mine, nor what-we-used-to-be's.
The day is a loud grenade that bursts a smile
Of serious weeds in a comic lily plot ... — Allen Tate

Living "in" a story, being part of a narrative, is much more satisfying than living without one. I don't always know what narrative it is, because I'm living my life and not always reflecting on it, but as I edit these pages I am aware that I have an urge to see my sometimes random wandering as having a plot, a purpose guided by some underlying story. — David Byrne

What happened is the least of it. It's a novel, and once you've finished a novel, what happened in it is of little importance and soon forgotten. What matters are the possibilities and ideas that the novel's imaginary plot communicates to us and infuses us with, a plot that we recall far more vividly than real events and to which we pay far more attention. — Javier Marias

Plot is a framework on which to drape other things. So once that's working, I can just let it go and do all the stuff that I love - 'Trojan horse' it. There are so many great YA heroines, and that's fantastic, but what about the emotionally complex boy out there? That's who I tend to write about. — Patrick Ness

The characters are the plot. What they do and say and the things that happen to them are, in a sense, what the plot is. You can't take character and plot apart from each other, really. — Terry Pratchett

Mockumentary formats are great for a couple of things. One of them is delivering the toughest part of any sitcom episode, what writers call "pipe" - the nuts and bolts of the story where you explain what's happening, the boring plot stuff. — Michael Schur

Imagine being able to plot in advance, in systematic fashion, the approach of all meaningful coincidences. Is that a priori, by the very meaning of the word, not a contradiction? After all, a coincidence, or as Pauli called it, a manifestation of synchronicity, is by its very nature not dependent on the past; hence nothing exists as a harbinger of it (cf. David Hume on the topic; in particular the train whistle versus the train). This state, not knowing what is going to happen next and therefore having no way of controlling it, is the sine qua non of the unhappy world of the schizophrenic; he is helpless, passive, and instead of doing things, he is done to. Reality happens to him
a sort of perpetual auto accident, going on and on without relief. — Philip K. Dick

A baby is a symbol of peace, a plot of dreams, a light of hope, and a bundle of joy. — Debasish Mridha

Winslow says I don't understand plotting and probably I don't - I have been congratulated many times on the skill shown in my plotting when I knew damn well that the story in question had not been plotted in advance at all. My notion of a story is an interesting situation in which a human being has to cope with a problem, does so, and thereby changes his personality, character, or evaluations in some measure because the coping has forced him to revise his thinking. How h copes with it I can't plot because that depends on his character, and I don't know his what his character is until i get acquainted with him. When I can "hear the character talk" then I'm all right - he works out his own salvation. — Robert A. Heinlein

More chibis," said Simon gloomily. All the characters on-screen had turned into inch-high baby versions of themselves and were chasing each other around waving pots and pans. "I'm changing the channel," Simon announced, seizing the remote. "I'm tired of this anime. I can't tell what the plot is and no one ever has sex."
"Of course they don't," Clary said, taking another chip. "Anime is wholesome family entertainment."
"If you're in the mood for less wholesome entertainment, we could try the porn channels," Simon observed. "Would you rather watch The Witches of Breastwick or As I Lay Dianne? — Cassandra Clare

Plot is to literature what individual holes are to miniature golf. — Stanley Elkin

There is something universally chilling about a new plot. And I could see how my boy needed time and space for a story to bloom in his mind, because at any age what comes before sight is a conjuring. A trope, which is just a way to believe. — Chang-rae Lee

I don't write plot-driven stories. Plotting feels too contrived and constraining to me. I posit. I agitate. I present contradictions, and in that respect, I suppose I write belief-driven stories. The point A to point B happens when the main character questions a belief they have at the beginning only to realize at the end that they were wrong.

The wade through the mud is what interests me. — Cheryl Anne Gardner

Men will gamble and plot and fight and fall, all for the winning of a trophy. A woman's heart, a piece of land, a kingdom, a lordship, a contract, a ship, an egg
it hardly matters the which or the what, as soon as it is seen to be desired by one, another will make a prize of it. — Jeanette Winterson

There is no narrative without structure, or plot. In a great story this structure seems like fate, like an inescapable judgment descending on its still unaware heroes, a great metaphysical causality, that crowds out all room for choice. Fate arises not as a limitation on our freedom, but as a manifestation of our freedom, testimony that choice is consequent. The exercise of your freedom cannot prevent the exercise of my own freedom, but it can determine the context in which I am to act freely. You cannot make choices for me, but you can largely determine what my choices will be about. Great stories explore the drama of this deeper touching of one free person by another. They are therefore genuinely sexual dramas astounding us once more with the magic of origins. — James P. Carse

The real targets of terrorism are the rest of us: the billions of us who are not killed but are terrorized because of the killing. The real point of terrorism is not the act itself, but our reaction to the act. And we're doing exactly what the terrorists want [ ... ] Our politicians help the terrorists every time they use fear as a campaign tactic. The press helps every time it writes scare stories about the plot and the threat. And if we're terrified, and we share that fear, we help. — Bruce Schneier

People live from one play to the next. In between, before the curtain goes up, they don't quite know what the plot will be or what part will be right for them, they stand there at a loss, waiting to see what will happen, their instincts folded up like an umbrella, squirming, incoherent, reduced to themselves, that is, to nothing. Cows without a train. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

The parts of our lives when we write them down seem to belong in different books, by different writers even. What all these bits and pieces make up I don't know. There is no plot. Perhaps meaning is something we invent afterward, putting it all together, like imagined God. — Niall Williams

All fiction is about people, unless it's about rabbits pretending to be people. It's all essentially characters in action, which means characters moving through time and changes taking place, and that's what we call 'the plot'. — Margaret Atwood

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. — George R R Martin

A strong enough situation renders the whole question of plot moot, which is fine with me. The most interesting situations can usually be expressed as a 'what-if' question ... — Stephen King

Home is where I take up such a tiny portion of the memory foam; home is a splintered word. His pillow is a sweat-stained map of an escape plot, also a map of love's dear abandon. (When did he give way, at which breath?) Forgiveness may mean retrospectively abandoning the pillow and abandoning the photograph of someone with curious eyes, kissing my toes, poolside. I paint my toes Big Apple Red. I don't know what to do about the shock of red nails on clean, white tiles except get used to it. (And when he gave way, was there room for feelings or the words for feeling?) While I brush my teeth, I can see him in my periphery at the other sink. The outline of him lulls and stings. (And when he gave way, was it the end of the beginning of suffering?) I draw his profile near, I make him brush his teeth with me, he spits and makes a mess. I could love another face, but why? — Karen Green

The problem may be a literary one: we are given a single story line about what makes a good life, even though not a few who follow that story line have bad lives. We speak as though there is one good plot with one happy outcome, while the myriad forms a life can take flower - and wither - all around us.
Even those who live out the best version of the familiar story line might not find happiness as their reward. This is not necessarily a bad thing. I know a woman who was lovingly married for seventy years. She has had a long, meaningful life that she has lived according to her principles. But I wouldn't call her happy; her compassion for the vulnerable and concern for the future have given her a despondent worldview. What she has had instead of happiness requires better language to describe. There are entirely different criteria for a good life that might matter more to a person - honor, meaning, depth, engagement, hope. — Rebecca Solnit

It is scary for an actor when you get hired as a lead. No matter what the plot is, it is your job to do something interesting enough to make them want to get inside the lead character's head. — Tom Selleck

The Illusionist is the storyteller in so many ways. Symbols become his obsession. It's not simply about creating plot - one must also grapple with theme. Nowadays we have a lot of characters and a lot of action but it's hard to sit still and really meditate on meaning, worldviews, concepts, ideologies even. I make my Illusionist do what I've had to do, often with copious amounts of stumbling and frustration. His real humanity comes from being an artist, I think - his creativity is what makes him a man. — Porochista Khakpour

If perchance a friend should betray you; if he forms a subtle plot to get hold of what is yours; if people should try to spread evil reports about you, would you tamely submit to all this without flying into a rage? — Moliere

Essentially and most simply put, plot is what the characters do to deal with the situation they are in. It is a logical sequence of events that grow from an initial incident that alters the status quo of the characters. — Elizabeth George

I told her that the plots were all the same, and that the style was pretty terrible. She would answer, 'Well, if it is a good plot, it will stand being read over a good many times, and the style doesn't matter as long as you can understand what the characters are doing. — John Wiley Jr.

Suppose a top politician, entertainment figure, or sports star said it didn't really matter who shot Lincoln or why, who attacked Pearl Harbor, the Alamo or the USS Liberty. Imagine the derision. Imagine the ridicule. Imagine the loss in credibility and marketing revenue. Now imagine if a well-respected academic 'who should know better' said exactly the same thing. It doesn't really matter who committed a great crime; history had nothing to teach us; we should never waste precious time trying to apprehend the perpetrators, nor understand their motives but focus only on the outcome of their foul deeds.

Well, that is exactly what Noam Chomsky appears to believe. Do not focus on the plot or the plotters or the clever planning of any crime but only the aftermath. Strangely, I had always thought linguistics was the scientific study of language rather than a lame attempt at disinformation. — Douglas Herman

It always seems to someone outside the business that it is very difficult to write for a comedy show because it must be done quickly. Actually, it is much easier to write this humor than to do a joke or a show from scratch, because the audience knows the plot. Just mention what is going on and then deliver the punch line. — Robert Orben

Plot is, I think, the good writer's last resort and the dullard's first choice. The story which results from it is apt to feel artificial and labored. I lean more heavily on intuition, and have been able to do that because my books tend to be based on situation rather than story. Some of the ideas which have produced those books are more complex than others, but the majority start out with the stark simplicity of a department store window display or a waxwork tableau. I want to put a group of characters (perhaps a pair; perhaps even just one) in some sort of predicament and then watch them try to work themselves free. My job isn't to help them work their way free, or manipulate them to safety - those are jobs which require the noisy jackhammer of plot - but to watch what happens and then write it down. — Stephen King

Scientific knowledge has taught [humans] much since the days of the Deluge, and it will increase their power still further. And, as for the great necessities of Fate, against which there is no help, they will learn to endure them with resignation. Of what use to them is the mirage of wide acres in the moon, whose harvest no one has ever yet seen? As honest smallholders on this earth they will know how to cultivate their plot in such a way that it supports them. By withdrawing their expectations from the other world and concentrating all their liberated energies into their life on earth, they will probably succeed in achieving a state of things in which life will become tolerable for everyone and civilization no longer oppressive to anyone. Then, with one of our fellow-unbelievers, they will be able to say without regret: 'We leave Heaven to the angels and the sparrows. — Sigmund Freud

Some say Twitter is overrated.
Some love it, others hate it.
I guess it depends on what you've got,
If you have guts to write a funny plot! — Ana Claudia Antunes

If you let the plot be determined by what you feel is in the character's mind at that point, it may not turn out to be a very good play, but at least it will be a play where people are behaving in a kind of truthful way. — Tom Stoppard

When you use single character viewpoint, you tell the main character's story - and only his or her story. Every single thing in the plot - whether it's an event, problem, emotion, or consequence - should be revealed through that main character's eyes. Your main character needs to be on center stage throughout the entire story, acting and reacting to what is happening in the plot. To do that effectively, reveal only your main character's emotions and thoughts. Tell your reader only what your main character is feeling, not the feelings of other characters. — Tracey E. Dils

The most challenging and exciting aspect is the outline and formation of the plot points. This is the stage where the notion of the story begins to take shape, and I can see glimpses of what is to come. — Tony DiTerlizzi

What is this life! you cry out. Only silence answers, and it is eloquent. Shining eyes open in the darkness, the eyes of that face, smiling too much and too long. Without a word, that smile coerces from you an old question: Was it all so useless? The smile pushes up at its edges, too rigid to be real. You cannot look away as it widens past all natural proportion. There is nothing left but that big smile. It is the last thing you see: a great gaping mouth like the entrance to a carnival ride. Then: the sense of being swallowed. That is the story; that is the plot of our lives. — Thomas Ligotti

This needs fixing, and I am the one who is going to fix it. I'm okay with that."
Arianna nodded. "But how? What are you going to do?"
"I have some ideas. But first I need something in my stomach before I fall over. So let's go eat and plot and then save the world."
David sighed, looking thoughtful.
"What's up, Dad?" Lend asked.
"I'm trying to figure out if there's any way I can lock you two in your rooms. I don't think a simple grounding will do it."
Raquel laughed. "Good luck trying to force Evie to do anything else once she has made up her mind. She is the definition of a stubborn, headstrong teenager."
"And you love me for it."
"I do." She hugged me, the spontaneity of the gesture surprising me. Even Lend's expression softened slightly toward her. — Kiersten White

The righteous will surround me, for you will deal bountifully with me" (v. 7). Here is staggering confidence in God! No matter what the wicked plot and how powerful they are, God is greater and he will deliver. Is this not the heart of the message of the gospel itself? No matter how great is our opponent - which, among other things, includes the sin and guilt of our own lives - God is greater, and his provision more fully revealed in Jesus Christ for our deliverance cannot fail. In Christ we know that the righteous will surround us, that God will deal bountifully with us. In Christ, we are invincible. — Anonymous

EVERY TIME I see a dog in a movie, I think the same thing: I want that dog. I see Skip or Lucy or Shiloh and for a moment I can't even think about the movie's plot. I can only think about the dog. I want to hold it, pet it, take it for walks, and tell it what a good dog it is. I want to love it, and I want it to love me. I have an empty space inside myself that can only be filled by a dog. — Roger Ebert

What frightened me most was, I could no longer believe in my own life as a story. Everyone needs a story, a part to play in order to avoid the realization that life is without significance. How else do any of us survive? It's what makes life bearable, even interesting. When it becomes neither, people say you've lost the plot. Or just lost it. — Amanda Craig

The whole idea of Mass Effect3 is resolving all of the biggest questions, about the Protheons and
the Reapers, and being in the driver's seat to end the galaxy and all
of these big plot lines, to decide what civilizations are going to
live or die: All of these things are answered in Mass Effect 3. — Casey Hudson

There's a story unfolding with a definite beginning and an eventual end, and even though we can't begin to imagine what the whole plot is, and we can hardly even see beyond the present moment, someday we're going to see and understand all of it. For now, we trust. Later, we'll know. — Ann Tatlock

I cannot tell you how important fresh, crisp writing is for an aspiring writer. Plot is great. The overall concept is super important. But the writing is what sells your work. It all boils down to the words you choose and the order in which you arrange them. — Darynda Jones

What I look for in a script is the plot point and whether they're strong, obviously, or not, whether the characters are rich or not, and if I can do justice to the character or not. Some movies you look at and the script is so bad that no one can do anything with the script. — Larenz Tate

Our easiest approach to a definition of any aspect of fiction is always by considering the sort of demand it makes on the reader. Curiosity for the story, human feelings and a sense of value for the characters, intelligence and memory for the plot. What does fantasy ask of us? It asks us to pay something extra. — E. M. Forster

I consider plot a necessary intrusion on what I really want to do, which is write snappy dialogue. — Aaron Sorkin

Is this what it's like, I thought then, and think now: a little blood here, a chomp there, and still we live, trampling the grass? Must everything whole be nibbled? Here was a new light on the intricate texture of things in the world, the actual plot of the present moment in time after the fall: the ways we living are nibbled and nibbling- not held aloft on a cloud in the air but bumbling pitted and scarred and broken through a frayed and beautiful land. — Annie Dillard

I'm trying to undermine the basis of Christian belief ... I'm not in the business of offending people. I find the books upholding certain values that I think are important, such as life is immensely valuable and this world is an extraordinarily beautiful place. We should do what we can to increase the amount of wisdom in the world.
[Washington Post interview, 19 February 2001] — Philip Pullman

The thing that I love is human behavior - why people do what they do, who they are, and the choices that they make - and that has to always be plot driven. — Richard LaGravenese

Crime fiction makes money. It may be harder for writers to get published, but crime is doing better than most of what we like to call CanLit. It's elementary, plot-driven, character-rich story-telling at its best. — Linwood Barclay

If someone is counting on children to bring them peace of mind, self-confidence, or a steady sense of happiness, they are in for a bad shock. What children do is complicate, implicate, give plot lines to the story, color to the picture, darken everything, bring fear as never before, suggest the holy, explain the ferocity of the human mind, undo or redo some of the past while casting shadows into the future. There is no boredom with children in the home. The risks are high. The voltage crackling. - Anne Roiphe, Married — Esther Perel

She said, "Your approach is wrong. You're writing an essay rather than creating a literary figure. What a literary character does in ten minutes might be a reflection of ten years' experience. You can't be limited to the plot of a novel - you've got to imagine her entire life, and what actually gets put into words is just the tip of the iceberg." So — Liu Cixin

Character is the very life of fiction. Setting exists only so that the character has someplace to stand. Plot exists so the character can discover what he is really like, forcing the character to choice and action. And theme exists only to make the character stand up and be somebody. — John Gardner

I don't think plot as a plot means much today. I'd say that everybody has seen every plot twenty times. What they haven't seen is characters and their relation to one another. I don't worry much about plot anymore. — Howard Hawks

Christy said. "It's just weird, your seeing him like that. What are you going to do?"
"Nothing. What can I do?"
"Maybe he'll call you to see if you're okay," Katie said.
"No," Christy said, "in the movies he would have told his friend to stop the car, and he would have run back to you with an umbrella and walked you the rest of the way hoe, and you would have made him a pot of tea."
Sierra laughed. "I am drinking tea right now," she said. "Maybe my life is a low budget 'B' movie, and all I get is the tea. No hero. No umbrella."
"Yeah, well then my life is a class 'Z' movie," Katie said. "No tea. No hero. No umbrella. No plot
"
"Yours is more of a mystery," Christy interrupted cheerfully. "The ending will surprise all of us. — Robin Jones Gunn

Plot is what happens in your story. Every story needs structure, just as every body needs a skeleton. It is how you 'flesh out and clothe' your structure that makes each story unique. — Caroline Lawrence

That's what life is, it's the small struggles. You walk down the street for half an hour, you see half an hour of drama. You don't need convoluted plot lines. You don't need long-lost brothers. You don't need it's set on the future; it's set on the moon. — Ricky Gervais

A fool I was to sleep at noon,
And wake when night is chilly
Beneath the comfortless cold moon;
A fool to pluck my rose too soon,
A fool to snap my lily.
My garden-plot I have not kept;
Faded and all-forsaken,
I weep as I have never wept:
Oh it was summer when I slept,
It's winter now I waken.
Talk what you please of future spring
And sun-warm'd sweet to-orrow:
Stripp'd bare of hope and everything,
No more to laugh, no more to sing,
I sit alone with sorrow. — Christina Rossetti

An idea has no worth at all without believable characters to implement it; a plot without characters is like a tennis court without players. Daffy Duck is to a Buck Rogers story what John McEnroe was to tennis. Personality. That is the key, the drum, the fife. Forget the plot. — Chuck Jones

I'm not good at narrative; I'm really a gag writer, and that comes from being in the newspaper comic strip world for a while in college. What I do is I just write tons of jokes, then I sort them out in terms of quality and then pick the best of the jokes and then try to form them into a plot. If I get a good theme going, I feel lucky. — Jeff Kinney

All of our faith and practice arise out of the drama of Scripture, the "big story" that traces the plot of history from creation to consummation, with Christ as its Alpha and Omega, beginning and end. And out of the throbbing verbs of this unfolding drama God reveals stable nouns - doctrines. From what God does in history we are taught certain things about who he is and what it means to be created in his image, fallen, and redeemed, renewed, and glorified in union with Christ. As the Father creates his church, in his Son and by his Spirit, we come to realize what this covenant community is and what it means to belong to it; what kind of future is promised to us in Christ, and how we are to live here and now in the light of it all. The drama and the doctrine provoke us to praise and worship - doxology - and together these three coordinates give us a new way of living in the world as disciples. — Michael S. Horton

In my case, if I start out by thinking about the plot, things don't go well. Small points, such as my impression of what is likely to occur, do come to mind, but I let the rest of the story take its own course. I don't want to spend as long as two years writing a story whose plot I already know. — Haruki Murakami

Overall, I was generally "delighted" with the book's story -- writing, theme, plot, etc. Seriously, though, I really did revel in it. After all, "what is a book for if not for our enjoyment? — Chris Mentillo

Do you ever get moods when life seems absolutely meaningless? It's like a badly-constructed story, with all sorts of characters moving in and out who have nothing to do with the plot. And when somebody comes along that you think really has something to do with the plot, he suddenly drops out. After a while you begin to wonder what the story is about, and you feel that it's about nothing - just a jumble. — P.G. Wodehouse

What must novel dialogue ... really be and do? It must be pointed, intentional, relevant. It must crystallize situation. It must express character. It must advance plot. During dialogue, the characters confront one another. The confrontation is in itself an occasion. Each one of these occasions, throughout the novel, is unique. — Elizabeth Bowen

This is what a total breakdown must be, I though. You find yourself standing somewhere you should't be, doing something so out of character that you wonder if you've become someone else entirely. You've lost the plot, taken a wrong turning, jumped into a train whose destination is total lunacy — Gilly Macmillan

This is love: You stop bothering about the universal, the general, get sucked instead into the local and particular: When will I see her again? What shall we do today? Do you like these shoes? Theory and reflection are delicate old uncles bustled out of the way by the boisterous nephews action and desire. Themes evaporate, only plot remains. — Glen Duncan

No story is more beautiful than the Gospel, even though it is a story full of pain and nails and hate and blood and sin and murder and betrayal and forsakenness and unimaginable agony and death. It is the story of what happens to the most beautiful thing, Perfect Love, when it enters our world: it comes to a Cross, to the crossroad between good and evil. All our most beautiful stories are like the Gospel: they are tragedies first, and then comedies; they are crosses and then crowns. They are crosses because they are conflicts between good and evil. That is the fundamental plot of every great story. To say "that story is beautiful" means "that story resembles the Gospel." If you are bored by the Gospel, that puts no black eye on the Gospel, but on you. Most likely, it means you have never listened to it. You must have heard it, but hearing is far from the same thing as listening ... — Peter Kreeft

I wonder what it is about a certain novel that ticks the boxes for a reader. I mean, for me, a story can have the most fascinating plot in the world, but if the narrator's voice is dull, then the plot counts for nothing. For me, authorial charm is everything. — Victoria Connelly

Plot might seem to be a matter of choice. It is not. The particular plot is something the novelist is driven to: it is what is left after the whittling-away of alternatives.' Elizabeth Bowen opened her Notes on Writing a Novel (1945, reprinted in Collected Impressions, Longmans, Green & Co., — Elizabeth Bowen

I'm changing the channel," Simon announced, seizing the remote. "I'm tired of this anime. I cant tell what the plot is and no one ever has sex."
"Of course they dont," Clary said, taking another chip. "Anime is wholesome family entertainment."
"If you're in the mood for less wholesome entertainment we could try the porn channels," Simon observed. "Would you rather watch The Witches of Breastwick or As I Lay Dianne?"
"Give me that!" Clary grabbed for the remote ...
-Simon & Clary, pg.16 & 17- — Cassandra Clare

Cinema is a mixed form. L'Avventura has characters, it has social context, and these things are not trivial. Its plot is the disappearance of a disappearance. Possibly the most frightening plot imaginable. Forgetting the dead, whom all of history tells us we must remember. But what makes movies themselves, rather than novels or plays, is something else. What is it if not the film medium itself? The purity of the visual, which lies in the silence of the stilled image. The freeze frame. The deeply, deeply silent image. Like death. The image in itself in its silent purity reaches
it reaches!
for the purity of death. — Frank Lentricchia

You will be surprised to learn how some very knowing people have misunderstood Plotto. On glancing at it, some of the intelligentia have jumped at the false conclusion, that Plotto is a dictionary of situations, a mechanism that yields a cut and dried plot by the mere use of a thumb index. Plotto, to the contrary, merely suggests the situations for the plot, explains what is to be done through Purpose and Obstacle and even offers suggestions as to the way in which it should be done. — William Wallace Cook

So let me get this straight." ... "He threw the note at Tommy and then told him to fuck off? Or do I have it backwards?"
"I'm detecting some sarcasm."
"And then got himself sent the principal's office because he was ready to defend your honor?"
"Quinn."
"Her friend waved a hand. "No, I think you might be on to something. This is clearly an elaborate plot to screw with you. He asks you out, he defends you from that meathead - what next?" Quinn's eyes flashed wide in mock surprise. "Crap, Bex, do you think he will do something truly horrible like buy you flowers? — Brigid Kemmerer

The plot is certainly sensational, but it hardly represents what actually happened. It is difficult to believe that the European emigrants by whom America has been populated took away with them all the virtues and left behind them all the vices of the races from which they had sprung; or that a few generations of residence on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean is sufficient to create an order of beings definitely superior in morals, in culture, and in humanity to their prototypes in Europe. The American — Winston S. Churchill

All my life I thought that the story was over when the hero and heroine were safely engaged
after all, what's good enough for Jane Austen ought to be good enough for anyone. But it's a lie. The story is about to begin, and every day will be a new piece of the plot. — Mary Ann Shaffer

Few of us make any serious effort to remember what we read. When I read a book, what do I hope will stay with me a year later? If it's a work of nonfiction, the thesis, maybe, if the book has one. A few savory details, perhaps. If it's fiction, the broadest outline of the plot, something about the main characters (at least their names), and an overall critical judgment about the book. Even these are likely to fade. Looking up at my shelves, at the books that have drained so many of my waking hours, is always a dispiriting experience. One Hundred Years of Solitude: I remember magical realism and that I enjoyed it. But that's about it. I don't even recall when I read it. About Wuthering Heights I remember exactly two things: that I read it in a high school English class and that there was a character named Heathcliff. I couldn't say whether I liked the book or not. — Joshua Foer

I always think plot is what you fall back on if you can't write, to keep things going. — Meg Rosoff

Remember ...
Keystrokes are hammer taps. Get words on paper. Don't worry about connections, character or plot. Work for an hour. Promise yourself an hour. Do nothing else but move your fingers. Make coarse shapes. Follow any emotion that pops up but never impose emotion, never fake it, and don't make up your mind or your heart ahead of time. Understand you don't know what you're doing. That's why you're here. Rough it out. Anything goes. You can decide later what any piece of text looks like, what it might mean. Don't stop. Don't question. Don't quit. Don't stop to read what you wrote. Move your fingers. You mind will have no other option but to keep up. Remember that writer's block is merely the cold marble waiting for the chisel to heat up. — Bob Thurber

The writer must face the fact that ordinary lives are what most people live most of the time, and that the novel as a narration of the fantastic and the adventurous is really an escapist plot; that aesthetically, the ordinary, the banal, is what you must deal with. — John Updike