Story Clarity Quotes

Yet if strict criticism should till frown on our method, let candor and good humor forgive what is done to the best of our judgment, for the sake of perspicuity in the story and the delight and entertainment of our candid reader.

You want in all cases for the story to get through the writing.

You want the audience to get your movie, and you want the audience to like it. It's as simple as that. If they don't understand what you're trying to say, you've failed. Of course, you can't get 100 percent of the crowd to understand the movie, but you know when you've reached the people you want to reach.

One of my biggest peeves is when the writer hasn't given you enough information to figure everything out. You should be able to go back to the beginning of 'Gone Girl,' after you've already read it and you know everything, and say, 'Check - check - yes, she gave us that information.'

I had a plot connection that nobody understood for this fourth character, and decided, Oh, nobody gets it, that's all. I'll write another draft to make her make sense. It took me awhile to learn that these three people were the core of this play, which seems so obvious now.

When you write a story, you’re telling yourself the story,” he said. “When you rewrite, your main job is taking out all the things that are not the story.

Maybe our telling of the story wasn't as clear as it should have been, but I don't think that's true. In terms of understanding the story, it comes across.

I don't like books that play to the gallery, but I've become more concerned with telling a story as clearly and engagingly as I can.

Once you figure out what's best for the story, take out the rest.

Usually, when I read something, I'm looking for the story first. And then, when I re-read it, I check every part of it to see whether every scene is necessary. You imagine yourself watching the movie, to see whether or not you're losing the through-line of the story.

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 it's a good movie, the sound could go off and the audience would still have a perfectly clear idea of what was going on.

Punctuation is a courtesy designed to help readers to understand a story without stumbling.

In real life, people are constantly saying one thing and doing another, but if you write your characters that way, the story becomes too hard to follow.

I think the things I wanted answered have been answered by people in the know that we can't talk about, so I'm perfectly happy with how Chewie came to be where he is and what is going on in Episode III.

There's always that moment when you realize what it's going to be. You might have an overarching theme and you need to fill in the blanks - and then there's this "Aha" moment when you see where it's going. That's the most satisfying part of writing.

Writing a log line helps you define - for yourself - the essential elements of the plot. It will also let you know immediately if major components of the plot are missing.

In a long story like 'Weathercraft,' it becomes kind of convoluted. It can become perhaps difficult to remember what led up to whatever point you're at. I worried a little bit about people being able to keep the shape of the story in their heads while they were reading it, and not wonder how they got wherever they were.

'The Merchant of Venice' is a straightforward, clear story, while 'The Winter's Tale,' as a general rule, is hard to present because there is so much plot.

Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

I think that when memoir goes wrong, it goes wrong from too much memory, too much detail. It's about clearing all that away and just getting to the story.

I don't think the author should make the reader do that much work to remember who somebody is.

As a viewer, the minute I start getting confused, I check out of the movie. Emotionally, I'm severed.

You always need to make sure that you're looking at every angle and every perspective so that people, when they read the story, know what's happening. You have to write for everyone.

It all starts with a very solid, well-executed script, where the story is very clear and everybody is rowing in the same direction. That's always good; that's a constant.