Narrative Tension Quotes

I love 'Titanic' and the idea that you're kind of rooting for Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet to survive despite the fact that you know that they're not going to.

War is more like a novel than it is like real life and that is its eternal fascination. It is a thing based on reality but invented, it is a dream made real, all the things that make a novel but not really life.

I think the best fiction is a form of psychological suspense, even though I don't really write in that idiom.

I have a bad habit, in the shows that I run, of killing off the people that I love.

I think great romance needs great obstacles and textures.

People in my novels always have terrible problems. If they are not terrible, I make them more terrible.

It is (to describe it figuratively) as if an author were to make a slip of the pen, and as if this clerical error became conscious of being such. Perhaps this was no error but in a far higher sense was an essential part of the whole exposition. It is, then, as if this clerical error were to revolt against the author, out of hatred for him, were to forbid him to correct it, and were to say, "No, I will not be erased, I will stand as a witness against thee, that thou art a very poor writer."

It's always very important to me to try to create a story that feels unpredictable. You can't jump ahead and see what's coming, but at the end, when you've watched the whole thing, it all feels inevitable.

In plotting a book, my goal is to raise the stakes for the characters and, in so doing, keep the reader mesmerized.

For me, drama is conflict.

I try to create sympathy for my characters, then turn the monsters loose.

I find that the most interestingly written parts happen to be the bad guys.

You need contrast and conflict in order to tell a story. Stories need to have dark and light, turmoil, all those things. But that does not mean the filmmaker has to suffer in order to show the suffering. Stories should have the suffering, not the people.

You can't tell a good story without conflict - the story can't be beautiful or meaningful. We're taught to run from conflict, and it's robbing us of some really good stories.

I let myself go at the beginning and write with an easy mind, but by the time I get to the middle I begin to grow timid and to fear my story will be too long. . .That is why the beginning of my stories is always very promising and looks as though I were starting on a novel, and the middle is huddled and timid, and the end is...like fireworks.

Why do you keep reading a book? Usually to find out what happens. Why do you give up and stop reading it? There may be lots of reasons. But often the answer is you don't care what happens. So what makes the difference between caring and not caring? The author's cruelty. And the reader's sympathy...it takes a mean author to write a good story.

But after all, the villains are the salt in the soup of a story.

Good stories must travel through conflict. And in epic stories, the conflict must become unbearable.

And that's the way of a real tale. Take any one that you're fond of. You may know, or guess, what kind of a tale it is, happy-ending or sad-ending, but the people in it don't know. And you don't want them to.

When the reader and one narrator know something the other narrator does not, the opportunities for suspense and plot development and the shifting of reader sympathies get really interesting.

Each kind of story has its own problems in writing, but my main concern really is to keep the reader on his toes, or to keep the strip unpredictable. I try to achieve some sort of balance between the two that keeps the reader wondering what's going to happen next and be surprised.

It's one thing to not want an evil-sorcerer type villain in your story, but it's another thing to avoid having any sort of antagonist at all. A story without an antagonist gets weird pretty quick.

There's only room for one hero in this story-and everyone knows the devil doesn't get to be the good guy.

Withholding things in a story is no good if you aren't building to something substantial. It becomes foreplay without the main event, and no one wants that.

What would there be in a story of happiness? Only what prepares it, only what destroys it can be told.