Story Flaws Quotes

While problems in a film are fairly easy to identify, the sources of those problems are often extraordinarily difficult to assess. A mystifying plot twist or a less-than-credible change of heart in our main character is often caused by subtle underlying issues elsewhere in the story.

My experience is, I do a table reading, and it's literally like it's written in colossal neon lights what's wrong with the screenplay.

But it isn’t a rough draft either. The one I turned in several months ago was rough. There were some bad plot holes, some logical inconsistencies, pacing problems, and not nearly enough lesbian unicorns.

One of the greatest sins in any story is false suspense. The kind of 'suspense' that disintegrates the moment you give your reader one second to think about it. And it's an easy trap to fall into, so watch carefully for it. If your story hinges on the question, 'Will Superman be pushed so far in his battle against Lex Luthor that he'll have to kill him?', or if your big cliffhanger moment is, 'Wow, is Spider-Man really dead this time?', then I understand Food Lion is hiring.

Any time two characters are talking about a third, the scene is a crock of s***.

Usually writer's block arises when something is wrong internally with the story.

With relatively few exceptions, the novel sacrifices too much, for me, on the altar of plot.

One of things that drives me nuts is you rarely get bad guys who are written very well.

You can forgive if the shot is not right, or the lighting is a bit off, but not if the writing is bad.

The story of Jesus makes no sense to me. God sent his only son. Why could God only have one son and why would he have to die? It's just bad writing, really. And it's really terrible in about the second act.

Normally, in a film with lots of twists and turns, half of them don't make sense; they're just there for their own sakes.

There's nothing worse than having a very strong female character and then suddenly having it go away.

I'm not a very big fan of 'Slumdog Millionaire.' I think it's visually brilliant. But I have problems with the story line. I find the storyline unconvincing.

You've all seen movies where the music isn't working with the story. And it's either because... the story isn't working itself. Or the composer kinda just wants to write whatever they want to write, not paying attention to the thing.

I'm not a good crime writer. I'm not good with plots... so I have to do something else.

As a writer, I had learned a lot on 'Margin Call' about embracing the weaknesses of a narrative and of a project. A story always has an inherent narrative weakness.

The benefit of this kind of outlining is that you discover a story's flaws before you invest a lot of time writing the first draft, and it's almost impossible to get stuck at a difficult chapter, because you've already done the work to push through those kinds of blocks.

There's not a woman in the book, the plot hinges on unkindness to animals, and the black characters mostly drown by Chapter 29.