Edgar Allan Poe Quotes

A story really isn't truly a story until it reaches its climax and conclusion.

What's important on a comedy show, or any show, is that some stories have to go somewhere. There have to be ends to the beginnings and middles you create. But sometimes it's like a way station on the highway, then the actual thing doesn't have to be this giant, climactic, life-changing, game-changing thing.

With a novel, you have to have a story. It's much more important to have it matter to the reader what happens to people, and it has to make sense and end in a way that is satisfying. So I spend a lot more time thinking about that. Then the writing itself usually is easier for me, because I know where it's going.

Stories work, if they have a beginning, middle and end.

Without sounding too pretentious, I was sort of a slave to the narrative. When the narrative cracks in, I have to go where it takes me. I had to go to the Bohemian Grove. It was the obvious end to the book.

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.

But then of course you reach a point where you have to say, I've got to figure out how this book's going to end. Otherwise, you're going to write yourself into so many dead-ends.

I began to be impressed by what made a good book-how you needed to have a sensible story, a plot that developed, with a beginning, a middle, and an end that would tie everything together.

As a rule, anyone who can tell a good story can write one, so there really need be no mistake about his qualification; such a man will be careful not to be wearisome, and to keep his point, or his catastrophe, well in hand.

In a lot of cases, writers discover that the novel needs to begin later in the action than they'd first thought.

There is no other way of writing a novel than to begin at the beginning at to continue to the end.

I never make notes; just a few small details when I'm writing, but nothing much. The plot is never written down. I will tell the story to myself, but I won't plan it. I'll speak the narrative in my head for a while.

I spent ages figuring out things like viewpoint, how you tell the story, and so on.

It's always good to have a story arch.

The way to write a thriller is to ask a question at the beginning, and answer it at the end.

In the writing of novels, there is the problem of how to shape a narrative.

As I work, I see my writing - each scene, each chapter, each section, each book - in three-act structures and classic myths, and I analyze them through the handy filter of the detective story.

I outline in some detail, but even after the outline is done I often get a new idea that is an improvement, so the outline is a living, breathing thing as well. I also re-outline when I'm two-thirds done, to be sure that there is an emotional payoff from all the plot lines and to be sure the story is as tight as it can be.

It's important, I think, for a writer of fiction to maintain an awareness of the pace and shape of the book as he's writing it. That is, he should be making an object, not chattering.

The point about a great story is that it's got a beginning, a middle and end.

I'm one of those people who think that stories should have a beginning, a middle and an end, and then they're over, and then you tell the next story.

I love writing two narratives! I think concurrent storylines are my favorite way to write a book.

I knew the beginning and the end – I just had to dream up a convincing middle.

Happy endings must come at the end of something,' the Walrus pointed out. 'If they happen in the middle of a story, or an adventure, or the like, all they do is cheer things up for awhile.

I've been told by people I respect that flashbacks only work if they have their own narrative, but they can't be part of the present narrative.