Compelling Narratives Quotes

Most great leaders are also great communicators. Great leaders have learned how to persuade so their objectives can be reached. The most powerful device to persuade is story. Stating facts and figures is not memorable. Emotionally connecting your audience to your idea through story will move them.

I've been watching a lot of cable shows like 'The Wire' and 'Breaking Bad' and 'Downton Abbey.' I love how real the moments are.

When you only have $15 million, you have to talk about something interesting. You can't just cut to a helicopter exploding.

There are no dull subjects. There are only dull writers.

It's a sin to bore people.

Amanda Ashley is a master storyteller.

All you can do is show people...You tell stories that are true and compelling.

The best books come from someplace deep inside.... Become emotionally involved. If you don't care about your characters, your readers won't either.

I like big books and I cannot lie. You other readers can’t deny That when a kid walks in with The Name of the Wind Like a hardbound brick of win. Story bling. Wanna swipe that thing Cause you see that boy is speeding Right through the book he’s reading. I’m hooked and I can’t stop pleading. Wanna curl up with that for ages, All thousand pages. Reviewers tried to warn me. But with that plot you hooked Me like Bradley. Ooh, crack that fat spine. You know I wanna make you mine. This book is stella ’cause it ain’t some quick novella.

Real content marketing isn’t repurposed advertising, it is making something worth talking about.

The ideas for stories that thronged my brain would not let me rest till I had got rid of them by writing them.

I don't know what makes a good feature story. I've always assumed that if it was a story that interested or amused me, that it would have the same impact on other people.

I just like good stories. I like really interesting scripts, I love really great filmmakers. And I'm open to all genres and all stories. But, there's certain ones that attract me, and I don't really sort of look at what I think is going to be successful, I look at more so, you know, is this what I want to do regardless of what everybody else thinks?

A good story is always a journey. It is about taking the journey, the people the hero meets along the way and how they change him or her. All stories are journeys. They don't have to be shocking or outrageous: they simply have to be interesting.

Skill alone cannot teach or produce a great short story, which condenses the obsession of the creature; it is a hallucinatory presence manifest from the first sentence to fascinate the reader, to make him lose contact with the dull reality that surrounds him, submerging him in another that is more intense and compelling.

Really interesting novels, they always are so demanding of you on some level that you don't fall asleep.

As I started to read nonfiction in the mid '70s, I discovered, holy cow, there was a lot of imaginative nonfiction. Not the kind where people use composite characters and invented quotes. I hate that kind of nonfiction. But imaginative in the sense that good writing and unexpected structure and vivid reporting could be combined with presenting facts.

The goal in blogging/ business/ inspiring non-fiction is to share a truth, or at least a truth as the writer sees it. To not just share it, but to spread it and to cause change to happen. You can do that in at least three ways: with research (your own or reporting on others), by building and describing conceptual structures, or with stories that resonate.

My wheelhouse is intense characters who have a certain sympathetic streak and also a sense of humor.

Stories in themselves are not automatically good; it has to be the right kind of story told by the right kind of person.

Some stories wait their turn to be told, others just tap you on the shoulder and insist you tell them.

I know some photographs that are extraodrinary in their power and conviction, but it is difficult in photography to overcome the superficial power or subject; the concept and statement must be quite convincing in themselves to win over a dramatic and compelling subject situation.

It is an author's primary duty to entertain. Sling out all the philosophical terms, but keep the reader turning the page.

It's the stories that make my heart beat faster ...those are the ones to write about

Creativity has got to be the warp and woof, the heart and soul, of our sermons.