Plot Relevance Quotes

If somebody is in a story, they need to be there for a reason, and not just to set up somebody else's story.

Think of every character as a main character. They believe they're the main characters in their stories. No one should just be an obstacle.

The subject of a novel is not the plot. Who remembers what happened to Lucien de Rebempre in the end?

One must never place a loaded rifle on the stage if it isn't going to go off. It's wrong to make promises you don't mean to keep.

When you write a high-tech thriller, and then people in the defense establishment start calling you - people I can't name - you feel you've hit a nerve.

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.

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

You can film the most exciting car chase and the most exciting stunts, but if you don't care about the person inside the car, and you don't care about their predicament, you're not really going to care about the action, either.

In 'Casino,' there was this scene where Bob De Niro tape-records Sharon Stone's phone call. Then he asks her about where she's going, and he catches her in a lie. It was a great scene, especially for Bob's work, but we found that, in light of the whole film, it wasn't needed.

I couldn't resist hiding some historical details and a few clues relevant to the plot and characters of 'A Discovery of Witches' throughout the pages of the novel.

Action-adventure, that genre, only works for me if you can care about the characters. If the hero's not taking some kind of a journey, then there are no stakes - and no stakes, then you don't care if he lives or dies, wins or loses.

I've seen shows that start to go down the path of fan service, and it really diminishes the quality.

I'm always interested in the ways in which a character can inhabit either a theme or a premise personally, so that those scenes that are about his character or his relationship with other characters feel in context and don't seem to be apart from or oddly vestigial to the actual drama.

Before Charlottesville, it might have been easy to dismiss the plot of 'Mudbound' as no longer relevant. Now, I feel like audiences will be more receptive to the material - and to interrogating their personal histories after watching it.

I have always believed that if a film has only two characters, but they do not make any sense, then the film's meaningless.