Anton Chekhov Quotes

If in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one it should be fired. Otherwise don't put it there.

What keeps readers turning pages is suspense, which you can create using a variety of techniques, including tension, pacing and foreshadowing.

That's the mark of a great storyteller, never to give away secrets in advance.

Sometimes, you don't realize that something is actually a sidetrack for the story, or it takes the tension out of a scene.

What resonates with me whenever I watch a great movie or TV show is the balance of inevitability and unpredictability. And it's a very delicate balance.

Of course, I'm being rude. I'm spoiling the ending, not only of the entire book, but of this particular piece of it. I have given you two events in advance, because I don't have much interest in building mystery. Mystery bores me. It chores me. I know what happens and so do you. It's the machinations that wheel us there that aggravate, perplex, interest, and astound me. There are many things to think of. There is much story.

If there is a gun hanging on the wall in the first act, it must fire in the last.

Roughly, the action of a character should be unpredictable before it has been shown, inevitable when it has been shown. In the first half of a novel, the unpredictability should be the more striking. In the second half, the inevitability should be the more striking.

If in the first act you introduce a gun, by the third act you have to use it.

I don't write jokes first. I write down topics. I think of what I want to talk about, and then I write the jokes - they don't write me... And even if you don't think it's funny, you won't think it's boring. You might disagree, but you'll listen. And maybe even laugh as you disagree.

When I read the scripts, I'm always so excited to see what's going to happen because it's unpredictable.

I think everything that I learned about stagecraft and carrying through - creating a through point for a theatrical device.

Whenever people say a coincidence in a novel is implausible, I think, Do I have a story for you.

Performing my show is something I constantly think about.

Just imagine how interesting it would be if I were to publish a romance of the "Secret Annexe." The title alone would be enough to make people think it was a detective story.

I have an idea of how the book will finish up, but it very rarely finishes up the way that I think it's going to.

People say, 'Why don't you do interviews? What do you think about this? What do you think about that?' My job in the band is to play drums, to get up on stage and hold the band together. That's what I do. At the end of the day that's all that's important. Everything else is irrelevant.

My preference is live performance, because you get the feedback. There's an energy. It's live theater. That's why I think actors like that.

What is useful about when there is a sort of pull-out to reveal moment going on is that it actually focuses the mind when you're writing the earlier scenes because you're thinking 'right, how do I? I can only show this amount of the room... I can only show these characters from the waist up because they've all got robot legs!' it's a challenge so it keeps you engaged on some level.

I think of myself as a theatre comic instead of club comic because I tend to talk for a bit before I start being funny. I don't really do the one-liners and five second bits or whatever. But it's good to work stuff out sometimes.

I think I always enjoyed the energy of a crowd, of being onstage. It started when I was even younger doing public speaking at school and just kept going from there.

Probably a good idea, let me know how it ends" "I already know how it ends" "You read the ending first?" "I always read the ending before I commit to the whole book." "If you know how it ends, why read the book?" "I don't read for the ending. I read for the story".

I think some musicians can almost forget that the stage is something to do something on, even if that thing is standing still.

In terms of trying to improve as an actor, for me it's always important to return to the stage. After doing a piece of theater for a prolonged period, I can think I must have surely improved in some way as an actor - you must be fitter than you were prior to doing it. For me, theater is very, very important in keeping things fresh and dangerous.

In the planning stage of a book, don't plan the ending. It has to be earned by all that will go before it.