Peter Segal Quotes

The suspense of a novel is not only in the reader, but in the novelist, who is intensely curious about what will happen to the hero.

Good stories are driven by conflict, tension, and high stakes.

I don't like plots. I don't know what a plot means. I can't stand the idea of anything that starts in the beginning - you know, 'beginning, middle and end.'

A subplot is a distinguishing characteristic of the novel; the short story, for example, does not need subplots.

The villain drives the plot.

Stories hold conflict and contrast, highs and lows, life and death, and the human struggle and all kinds of things.

I love good stories; you have to have a good plot - characters which intertwine with a good plot.

I'm not much of a plotter. I start off with an inciting incident, and in classic crime fiction what happens is that all the action flows from that incident. It's very comfy when it all ties up and feels like a complete universe, but my stuff doesn't always work that way.

Tension is the cornerstone of any good story.

I hate plots.

That is what I define as a novel: something that has a beginning, a middle and an end, with characters and a plot that sustain interest from the first sentence to the last. But that is not what I do at all.

Every story I write starts with a dilemma or a theme. Once I am convinced that this is the issue that is perturbing my thoughts, I start to look for characters capable of representing it.

With any good story, you need the adversary, the heroes and villains. You need a good mixture to make it work.

I think too often in films, people think endings are a summation of plot, and I don't like that. Because once you know where you're going as an audience member, then it's like a video game. You're just waiting for them to get through the levels and beat the bad guy. And I just think that's boring.

A compelling story requires conflict, friction, an obstacle to be overcome.

I think screenwriting gave me more of an affinity for plot - my first novel, 'Me and Earl and the Dying Girl,' doesn't have a very sophisticated roadmap. But screenwriting required me to learn a higher level of plottiness, and I tried to bring that to 'The Haters.'

Here's what happens in a play. You get involved in a situation where something is unbalanced. If nothing's unbalanced, there's no reason to have a play. If Hamlet comes home from school, and his dad's not dead and asks him if he's had a good time, it's boring. But if something's unbalanced, it must be returned to order.

Storytelling is about two things; it's about character and plot.

Character development is conflict.

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.

A friend of mine who is in the publishing business knew I was writing a book, and he said, 'Have you said anything yet about the good guy? Because I know you spend so much time with the bad guys.' Because they're fun. So then you have to make the good guy fun, in order to compete. That's the challenge.

My conception of it was that in a normal film you have a story with different movements that program, develop, go a little bit off the trunk, come back, and end.

An action movie should, like any other, follow the narrative traditions of literature. That means there should be subtlety, a slow build and a gradual bringing together of all the separate threads of the plot. To see all of it coming together slowly is very rewarding for the audience.

The beginning of a plot is the prompting of desire.

I'll tell you the secret. When you begin with a character, you want to begin by creating a villain.