Melvyn Bragg Quotes

In a story, you have to have a theme and an angle, you have to have a beginning, middle and an end. You have to have a defining moment and kick it to death. You gotta be able to recognize that, by the way. It probably takes experience.

As an actor, I think a mistake that any storyteller can make is to play the ending.

I'm very good at plot.

I care about narrative structure; I care about how stories unfold.

Fans want to see a story with characters, and they want to see a story.

What makes a story a story is that something changes. Internal, external, small or large, trivial or of earth-shattering importance. Doesn't matter.

The luxury we have when we do a series is that we go through a long journey, and it keeps a lot of information and things to be revealed.

People have forgotten how to tell a story. Stories don't have a middle or an end any more. They usually have a beginning that never stops beginning.

Listen to great storytellers; slowly, you will learn about voice, timing, tension, structure, climax - all the things you need to tell stories that will capture the imagination of your audience.

I have a plot, but not much happens.

The key is a good story. If you have a good story, you have enough emotional beats that you can hit.

If you're gonna start a story, you start from the beginning, right?

The great thing about a trilogy is that it feels like you've got a beginning, a middle, and an end.

If you have a beautiful story, it has to have conflict. If you don't have conflict, it can't be a good story.

Every story has its demands.

In each scene, the writer sets up a situation, which brings a conflict as well as either a small victory or a loss at the close of that particular scene.

Tension is the cornerstone of any good story.

At the heart of any successful film is a powerful story. And a story should be just that: a narrative with a beginning, middle, and end, powerful protagonists that audiences can identify with, and a dramatic arc that is able to capture and hold viewers' intellectual and emotional attention.

It's always the story that interests me.

When you tell a story, there are imperatives of structure, of style, of pacing and all of this, that are there simply because you want to make it a good story. When do you introduce your characters? When do you put them onstage, when do you take them off the stage? How do you weave the different threads of the narrative together?

I write largely plot-driven stories.

I think a script is great when it starts with the structure and works with the structure without falling into the typical three-act system in which the audience is ahead of the movie. I hate that, but that is like 99% of what I read.

You want, whenever you're telling a story, to have a certain amount of range, and you want to be able to take the audience on that ride with you.

Traditional fiction has a little bit of spatial exploration but is basically a question of time - the question is, what happens next?

The writing is only ever the attractive thing about a part. And also if all the elements within the writing come together - the character and the structure and the narrative - if they are all there then you become excited.