Climax Quotes

Love is like death. It is fulfillment and an evening after which nothing more may follow.

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

When I'm plotting out a book, I use a storyboard - I'll have maybe three lines across on the storyboard and just start working through the plot line. I always know where relationships will go and how the book is going to end.

With TV season structures - and I'm a huge TV watcher - you look at shows like 'Breaking Bad,' which is my favorite show of all time, and 'The Sopranos,' which is pretty high up there as well, and there was that thing where, every season, Walter White would go up a level, but there would be a new bad.

There's a lot of similarities, I think, between a thriller and a comedy because it's all about tension. It's about building tension and setups and payoffs and misdirections and surprising people and sort of pushing the boundary.

I want to tell a story and shape it all the way through to the end.

I go straight into shooting with a script that's 80 per cent complete and I wait for my characters to grow on me before I finalise the climax.

If you're writing a thriller, mystery, Western or adventure-driven book, you'd better keep things moving rapidly for the reader. Quick pacing is vital in certain genres. It hooks readers, creates tension, deepens the drama, and speeds things along.

In re-reading 'Presumed Innocent,' the one thing that struck me - and I re-read the book four different times in writing 'Innocent,' interested in different things each time - but I did think there were a couple of extra loops in the plot that I probably didn't need. The other thing that sort of amazed me was how discursive the book was.

My poems tend to have rhetorical structures; what I mean by that is they tend to have a beginning, a middle, and an end. There tends to be an opening, as if you were reading the opening chapter of a novel. They sound like I'm initiating something, or I'm making a move.

I think that the joke and the ghost story both have a similar set up in that you kind of set something up and pay it off with a laugh or a scare.

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.

I feel like if you really know the ending right from the beginning, you can add so many subtleties and little things later that will pay off and be more consistent and more rewarding for the reader.

We're going to finally wrassle to the ground this gigantic orgasm that is just out of control.

Look at Austen. In her novels, you get a dance, followed by an encounter, followed by a letter, then a period of solitude. No flashbacks and no backstory. Let's have no more back story!

Why, for example, do the great writers use anticipation instead of surprise? Because surprise is merely an instrument of the unusual, whereas anticipation of a consequence enlarges our understanding of what is happening.

I hate plots.

Love is a wave building to a crescendo. Ride if you will, ride it with me.

Doing 'YHA' felt as if I was shooting for a film because it was a love story with a definite ending and good script.

Don't mistake a good setup for a satisfying conclusion - many beginning writers end their stories when the real story is just ready to begin.

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.

If I'm going to end my career, I want to end my career at the top.

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

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.

The thing should have plot and character, beginning, middle and end. Arouse pity and then have a catharsis. Those were the best principles I was ever taught.