Story Discovery Quotes

When I write my novels I don't really have a huge plan beforehand; I don't have the whole plot and architecture, so the story is sort of discovered as I write it.

I don't really decide what the core of the story is before I write. I write to figure out what the story is. And I think the characters end up talking to you and telling you what they want to be doing and what is important to them. So in some ways, your job is to listen as much as it is to write.

The things I discovered when writing 'Line of Duty' were the tools you have available to write a thriller.

For me, when I 'discover' a story, there is a feeling of buoyancy and clarity, perhaps similar to early morning out on a prairie highway, when darkness lifts and reveals the outline of farmhouses and copses of trees in the distance.

If you're a writer, you know that the stories don't come to you - you have to go looking for them. The old men in the lobby: that's where the stories were.

Let your characters talk to each other and do things. Spend time with them - they'll tell you who they are and what they're up to.

I have never felt like I was creating anything. For me, writing is like walking through a desert and all at once, poking up through the hardpan, I see the top of a chimney. I know there's a house under there, and I'm pretty sure that I can dig it up if I want. That's how I feel. It's like the stories are already there. What they pay me for is the leap of faith that says: 'If I sit down and do this, everything will come out okay.'

What I discovered is I don't like to repeat lead characters because one of the most pleasurable things in a book to me is learning about the lead.

I'm always looking for a story.

I started looking into horse history books and came across the actual story of this half-breed endurance horseman and his painted mustang Hidalgo. I wasn't really sure if I was going to do the movie at that point.

I myself, as I'm writing, don't know who did it. The readers and I are on the same ground. When I start to write a story, I don't know the conclusion at all and I don't know what's going to happen next. If there is a murder case as the first thing, I don't know who the killer is. I write the book because I would like to find out. If I know who the killer is, there's no purpose to writing the story.

First drafts are for learning what your story is about.

When you're editing, you're putting it together in a way that makes sense metaphysically. You're not inventing it, but you're finding the story that's there. You're making a play that's eventually going to go on stage and present itself to an audience. You want to show what happened, not exactly what you have evidence of happening.

When it is going well, it is the best job [writing] in the world. For those few hours, you are god, in control of everything. However, for me, the great joy of writing is that it has allowed me to travel the world in search of stories.

My favorite movies are the ones that are different the second time, or where you're constantly discovering new things. It's not just genre movies, either, and it's not just about twists. I saw 'Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy' four times in the theater before I realized it's a love story. I love that.

The way that I write novels in particular is I don't usually outline; I just write. Part of the fun is discovering what's happening in the story as I'm going along.

I love rewriting because that is where and how you discover the story. It's like you have this skeleton, and you get to put flesh on it and hair and clothes and really wonderful jewelry.

A book suggests a whole world and story that I could have never thought of in a million years.

I don't plot my books rigidly, follow a preconceived structure. A novel mustn't be a closed system - it's a quest.

I read as many scripts as I can and just find stuff that I think is interesting, find stories that I think are worth telling.

It's a funny thing about stories. It doesn't feel like you make them up, more like you find them. You type and type and you know you haven't got it yet, because somewhere out there, there's that perfect thing -- the unexpected ending that was always going to happen. That place you've always been heading for, but never expected to go.

But on the other hand, I don't actively seek out stories or hunt them down.

I'm always drawn to stories that people don't know about, particularly when they're inside of a story that everyone knows about.

I'm always trying to look for how I can find human stories that aren't just dramas.

There are a few really fantastic stories left, and that kind of gives you some inspiration to find even new ones.