Story Closure Quotes

Storytelling wise, you've gotta take it as far as you can possibly take it with each individual movie. If you're holding out something for a sequel or some cliff-hanger, that's not how I think of a satisfying story.

It's hard to say how certain stories just punch us in the heart and the brain at the same time at the end. I suppose that's what we're all looking for. But each story has its own valence, its own way of saying goodbye to you.

When I began 'Wicked', I really thought of it entirely as a one-off, as the English say. There was no intention that there should ever be a follow up, because the subtitle was 'The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West'. She was dead and gone, as the book says, at the end.

For me and my storytelling and the way that I embrace stories in the way that I embrace characters, I desperately needed to know that everything was okay.

I had this really great amazing thing happen where I almost finished the book and I really needed to come up with an ending and I decided to go back and re-read the book and see if I could come up with an ending.

I'm happy with the way '100 Bullets' ends terribly.

I consciously try to end my novels at a point where I won't have to wonder about my characters ever again.

The sad part about happy endings is there's nothing to write about.

One of the problems with episodic television of any color is that everything has got to be okay at the end of the episode so it can start again next week.

Yeah, I don't necessarily like endings that contrive an artificial moment of completion.

I have struggles in screenwriting that lead me to a third act that's always more or less efficiently wrapped up in a fourth act that's trying to give closure to too many things.

I must say, I always - from experience, when I watch TV shows and I see characters leave without a proper explanation or leave with not enough time, I get irritated. I like it when there's a clean-cut reason or a defining moment where they have to go. Whether that's death or not, I think that's subjective.

I started thinking about the endings of novels not because I think endings are so important, but because I think they're actually not as important as they're sometimes given credit for.

With the finale episode of 'Gravity Falls' our job as storytellers is to finish all the things we've started.

Lots of shows get cancelled, and then they never get to end their stories. It's just over.

I wrote Steve Carell's last episode. I think it was a really good episode, but there's always a tension between what's good for the series and what's good for an episode, because the more closure you put on an episode, the more significant feeling it is.

I'm truly grateful to the writers of Fringe for giving me that because, over the years, when I've spoken about the character with them, I've always felt that this would be the perfect way to end and complete his journey, and to complete the journey of this series, and they gave it to me.

You don't have to resolve every problem of the book at the end, but you do have to resolve some.

The biggest regret I have about 'Rubicon' is that we didn't end it. Sometimes you do these shows and you don't have the opportunity to get closure. Stories are supposed to have a beginning, middle and an end.

If I went for a long period in my life where I was unemployed and I was unable to make a living and the only way for me to basically provide for my family was, "Hey, we're bringing Lost back!", then I would probably consider it. But I feel like it would be a betrayal to the fandom, and myself, to do anymore Lost, because we had such an adequate period of time to end the show.

Fortunately, at the end of every season, we close the chapter and start anew. That's the language of the series now, so it can organically come to a conclusion that we love.

When you're doing a movie, it's finite - you have a trajectory of where your character's going, and you follow that. Then the storybook closes.

I read *old* novels. The reason is simple. I prefer proper endings.

The last paragraph, in which you tell what the story is about, is almost always best left out.

With Sugarland, it never felt like we were finished telling our story.