Narrative Simplicity Quotes

Writing a children's book means you cannot spin out long narratives or have complex character development.

In the case of 'Fantastic Woman,' I wanted to make it a more complex animal than just a 'cause' film. Even though I was sympathizing with the character's struggle, I didn't want to be trapped at that level - it's important, but it can be quite basic.

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!

People always want narratives to be clean and easy.

I've never been a fan of whimsical or confusing storytelling.

My needs were simple I didn't bother much with themes or felicitous phrases and skipped fine descriptions of weather, landscapes and interiors. I wanted characters I could believe in, and I wanted to be made curious about what was to happen to them. Generally, I preferred people to be falling in and out of love, but I didn't mind so much if they tried their hand at something else. It was vulgar to want it, but I liked someone to say 'Marry me' by the end.

Something deep within us drives accurate messiness into the neat channels of canonical stories.

My experience of great storytelling, working with classics, is just finding a way to present it simply but let the story do its own work, or be an invite to the audience's imagination.

I've dropped myself into straightforward character pieces in order to explore that form and reap its values. But you are sort of restricted visually when your first requirement is to tell a fairly straightforward story.

As a writer, you're making a pact with the reader; you're saying, 'Look, I know and you know that if this book was really a murder investigation, it would be a thousand pages long and would be very dull, and you would be very unhappy with the ending.'

Changing people's preconceptions is something you have to do in order to search for truth. Of course normally, that's not done because it also challenges social stability, and stories, as a result, are often told much more simply.

Sometimes ... the short short appears to rest on nothing more than a fragile anecdote which the writer has managed to drape with a quantity of suggestion. A single incident, a mere anecdote - these form the spine of the short short.

One of the main things when you get notes from a studio is they don't want anyone to be confused ever, everything has got to be so obvious at all times unless it's a twist ending.

If in making a picture you introduce two ideas, you weaken it by half-if three, it weakens by compound ratio-if four, the picture will be really too weak to consider at all and the human interest would be entirely lost.

It's good filmmaking when you don't have to say anything and you can still tell the story.

Love stories that are too simple don't deserve to have films made about them.

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.

I do read some of the scripts from America and, even though the themes or subject of the film is very interesting, and some of the scenes are very interesting, there is a tendency that they have to explain everything. There will be no dilemma. This guy was evil, and this girl was very sweet. And in the end, we'd have to see eight endings because we'd also have to know what happened to the uncle. It's like, "Are you kidding me?!"

His life, measured in space and time, will take up a mere few lines, which my ignorance will abbreviate further.

The beautiful thing about 'American Gods' is that it's very simple at its core.

It gets harder and harder to make movies about human beings. These movies are like an endangered species. Everything is 'simplify, simplify' now. How many movies have sub-plots anymore?

Generally speaking, the misfit's story is easier to tell.

Real life is not quite as it is in stories. In the old tales, bad things happen, and when the tale has unfolded and come to its triumphant conclusion, it is as if the bad things had never been. Life is not as simple as that, not quite.

With enemies, it's easier to just have them be straight-up bad guys so they can just get beaten up.

Very little happens in my books.