Lauren Beukes Quotes

The art of storytelling is in development, not fact sheets. There are posts you have to hammer into the ground from the start just to get going, but if they don't hold up the house you build, you can change them or take them out.

Granted there are only seven stories in the universe. And I agree with that. But give me a great variation of those stories. And literate.

You have only so many chances to tell stories. I didn't want to be forever wedded to one form of storytelling when there are so many out there.

People who actually tell stories, meaning people who write novels and make feature films, don't see themselves as storytellers.

There are so many projects that you go into hoping the story works, and here comes a new third act and that kind of thing.

A novel wouldn't be a book if there weren't some flights of fancy on the part of the author, stopping time to examine things, or to tell a joke.

I think you can get a sort of intensity and an edginess offering nine stories in a book. Competing versions of things.

How many times can you put together 26 different stories without running out?

I'm actually quite critical of the storytelling theme. I think all the storytellers are not storytellers.

The story [for the western genre] is everything. Whether it's a book or a screenplay, the story drives everything. And if you just go out and try to make one by putting on boots and jumping on a horse and riding off... If you don't have the material, the characters and the things to overcome and conflicts that give life to drama, you don't have it.

A short story is a love affair, a novel is a marriage. A short story is a photograph; a novel is a film.

The story is everything, so it always begins with a story.And research is a kind of scaffolding built underneath the story as I go along. My enjoyment level varies, but in general, I'm writing about topics I find interesting, so I can't gripe too much.

The story is everything, so it always begins with a story. Research is a kind of scaffolding built underneath the story as I go along. My enjoyment level varies, but in general, I'm writing about topics I find interesting, so I can't gripe too much.

I think when I write movies and plays and books and magazine articles, they're all storytelling, and reality is the common denominator that binds them.

The story is the only thing that's important. Everything else will take care of itself. It's like what bowlers say. You hear writers talk about character or theme or mood or mode or tense or person. But bowlers say, if you make the spares, the strikes will take care of themselves. If you can tell a story, everything else becomes possible. But without story, nothing is possible, because nobody wants to hear about your sensitive characters if there's nothing happening in the story. And the same is true with mood. Story is the only thing that's important.

I've never invested myself properly in trying to write stories. When I write lyrics, mostly I write each sentence separately on an index card and then I lay them out and I just mix them up.

Don’t sit down in the middle of the woods. If you’re lost in the plot or blocked, retrace your steps to where you went wrong. Then take the other road. And/or change the person. Change the tense. Change the opening page.

As regards plots I find real life no help at all. Real life seems to have no plots.

The most important thing is the story. Not the script, but the story.

Writing children's books gives a writer a very strong sense of narrative drive.

Successful fiction does not need to be validated by 'real life'; I cringe whenever a writer is asked how much of a novel is 'real'.

I find that on serialized television it's wiser to hit the ground and look forward, and take the cues from the writers and the events happening, otherwise you just tie yourself in knots.

To be honest, I found the 3D in 'Avatar' to be inconsistent and while ground breaking in many respects, sometimes I thought it overwhelmed the storytelling. Technology aside, I wish 'Avatar' had been more original in its storytelling.

I don't really do themes. I might accidentally, but themes are an emergent phenomena of the writing of the book, of just trying to get a story out there.

I began writing fictional stories and little screenplays when I was in fifth grade.