Narrative Efficiency Quotes

In a 22-page comic, figuring an average of four to five panels a page and a couple of full-page shots, a writer has maybe a hundred panels at most to tell a story, so every panel he wastes conveying a.) something I already know, b.) something that's a cute gag but does nothing to reveal plot or character, or c.) something I don't need to know is a demonstration of lousy craft.

How often one reads a contemporary full-length novel and thinks quietly, mutinously, that it would have worked out better at half or a third the length.

What I love about [TV] is this: It's a specific thing to be able to tell a satisfying, rewarding story in less than 25 minutes. Not everyone can pull that off. There's something really cool about giving lit people a bunch of little mini movies.

What I really want to do is produce. There isn’t much patience with a slow developing story line anymore.

In the good mystery there is nothing wasted, no sentence, no word that is not significant.

I love short stories - reading and writing them. The best short stories distill all the potency of a novel into a small but heady draught. They are perfect reading material for the bus or train or for a lunchtime break. Everything extraneous has been strained off by the author. The best short stories pack the heft of any novel, yet resonate like poetry.

Short stories are designed to deliver their impact in as few pages as possible. A tremendous amount is left out, and a good short story writer learns to include only the most essential information.

According to Chekhov," Tamaru said, rising from his chair, "once a gun appears in a story, it has to be fired." "Meaning what?" "Meaning, don't bring unnecessary props into a story. If a pistol appears, it has to be fired at some point. Chekhov liked to write stories that did away with all useless ornamentation.

A movie will do in one second, with one image, what it will take a novelist at least a page to describe.

I'm so tired of stories starting, 'Maud Jones was walking her dog down Broadway.' You've got to go over to the back page somewhere to finally find out the damn dog was run over by a truck. Get the thing told, for heaven's sake. Everybody doesn't have to be an O. Henry.

In commercial fiction especially, everything in the story usually contributes directly to the plot The shorter the story, the truer this is

The short story packs a self in a few pages predicating a lifetime

In a novella, a whole lot of crap can happen, and you can build momentum and suspense and leave room for a surprise or three. Stories are cut down to the most essential elements, and novels (this might be an unfair generalization on my part) are big fat clumsy efforts where the reader can snooze for a couple chapters and miss nothing of consequence. Hence my love for the middle way.

Something that I learned from 'Friday Night Lights,' sometimes if you have four or five scenes in an episode, it's not having less than having 10. It's what you do with those scenes.

Independent filmmaking burns off a lot of storytelling fat.

Songs give you incredible opportunity to convey a tremendous amount in a relatively short period of time. The first thing that John Powell, our composer, says is, "Is the song engaging you to tap your toe?" If you're not tapping your toe, it doesn't matter what you're doing in the song, it's not going to work. But, if you can get the audience to be engaged by the song, then it gives you the opportunity to accomplish so much, in a very concise way.

In the novel, I can change things and simplify, and make events work towards whatever meanings I'm trying to get at more efficiently.

Neorealism taught us to follow the characters with the camera, allowing each shot its own real interior time. Well, I became tired of all this; I could no longer stand real time. In order to function, a shot must show only what is useful.

My sentences got sharper and my stories more efficient, and I gradually learned to imagine the reader more clearly and to empathize with that imagined reader, which is a crucial part of learning to tell stories.