Plot Importance Quotes

When I watch a movie I don't really care too much about the plot - not that it isn't important, but what I remember is the visual imagery, something that happens in an individual scene.

I feel a lot of adult fiction looks down on plot as a lesser form of literature.

The plot of a movie is its motor. It is not an accident that people call pictures 'vehicles' for stars. A vehicle has to move. A plotless story is like an expensive car with a wonderful body design, luxurious seats, upholstery, headlights (production, direction, cast) - and no motor under its hood. That is why it gets nowhere.

If you string together a set of speeches expressive of character, and well finished in point and diction and thought, you will not produce the essential tragic effect nearly so well as with a play which, however deficient in these respects, yet has a plot and artistically constructed incidents.

I think plot is very overrated. Plot is obviously necessary, but what I really care about is emotionally affecting the audience. Having a thought myself and then an emotional experience myself, somehow transferring that to the audience.

The plot is not very important to me, though a novel must have one, of course. It's just a line to hang the washing on.

I am a firm believer that a good plot makes for a fun enough read, but it's not what binds us. If we don't care about the characters, we won't care - not in a lasting way - about what's happening to them.

Plot is tremendously important to me: I can't stand books where nothing happens, and I can't imagine ever writing a novel without at least one murder.

But, as an actress, you don't want to run into these scenes, willy-nilly. The couple that I did do were important for the character and essential to the plot, to show what was actually going on between each character. It is great to be able to have that, and to be able to say certain things and have certain passions.

I'm not an enormous proponent of plot as a reader. It's about other things; my reading has become specialized over the years.

Obviously, a theatrical masterpiece needs more than a plot; many television shows are nothing but plot, and it is doubtful that they will stand the test of time. But I also don't think that making fun of plot or acting like we're all somehow 'above' structure is such a good idea.

Authors of so-called 'literary' fiction insist that action, like plot, is vulgar and unworthy of a true artist. Don't pay any attention to misguided advice of that sort. If you do, you will very likely starve trying to live on your writing income. Besides, the only writers who survive the ages are those who understand the need for action in a novel.

Certain writers look down their noses at plot, and I think I might have been one of them until I tried it.

The plot is very important because writers have to play fair with their readers, but no one would care about the plot if the character work wasn't there. So, basically every book I work on starts with me thinking not just about the bad thing that's going to happen, but how that bad thing is going to ripple through the community, the family of the victim, and the lives of the investigators. I am keenly aware when I'm working that the crimes I am writing about have happened to real people. I take that very seriously.

What the devil does the plot signify, except to bring in fine things?

It's a cliche, and in a way it's a conservative idea about fiction, but I did learn the hard way that plot does need to dictate the story.

The one thing I would like more credit for is being part of a movement which involves recognising the importance of plot and asserting that books of literary worth could be written that had plots.

Characters should on the whole, be under rather than over articulate. What they intend to say should be more evident, more striking (because of its greater inner importance to the plot) than what they arrive at saying.

I think it goes without saying that young would-be playwrights in developmental workshops should be so lucky as to write plays as good as 'Waiting for Godot,' 'Uncle Vanya' or 'King Lear,' none of which would have existed without a decent plot.

The thing about action films is that they are high on drama in terms of action sequences, have songs and other things, but content is secondary.

A plot is like the bones of a person, not interesting like expression, or signs of experience, but the support of the whole.

My books are primarily plot driven but the best plot in the world is useless if you don't populate them with characters that readers can care about.

I always start with characters rather than with a plot, which many critics would say is very obvious from the lack of plot in my films - although I think they do have plots - but the plot is not of primary importance to me, the characters are.