Story Purpose Quotes

If something is a comedy for the sake of just comedy's sake and it doesn't have a good message, I don't have an interest in being part of it. If something is just serious and scary with no good message, I don't want to be a part of it.

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

Where radio is different than fiction is that even mediocre fiction needs purpose, a driving question.

Life is hard, and a lot of people come home tired from work. If they're gonna spend half an hour reading, they want some entertainment and a sense of achievement. So that's what I give them. That's all I'm trying to do. Is that really so wrong?

Plot is a map and I begin with it. It is what made me admire the novels of the 19th century; that the stories are foreshadowed. TheyÕre going someplace.

As a reader, I don't feel a story has an obligation to make me happy. I want stories to show me a bigger world than the one I know.

You always have to know what the ambition of the scene is, what the purpose of that scene is in the telling of the story overall, so that you're there to support the story.

I don't know if anything I write will endure, but I do try to write it as a narrative that will not only challenge but also entice the reader into the lives of children.

The Business story is designed to trigger the listener to take an effective action. If it doesn't, the story fails.

The most important part of a story is the ending. No one reads a book to get to the middle.

I get tired of stories that keep going and going and never get anywhere. It's like a promise that's never fulfilled. Stories need endings. Otherwise, they aren't really stories. Just pages.

A lot of novels use crime as a stepping stone to talk about greater issues. So I just think of myself as a writer.

We all think that an exception is going to be made in our case and were going to live forever. Being a human is actually arriving at the understanding that thats not going to be. Story is there to remind us that its just OK.

If you tell a story that's only allegory, then it doesn't help you at all. If it doesn't bring some emotional charge, then it's just talking about something.

I try to find stories that I would think that everyone would find interesting, and just a good entertaining story, and then if I can find a story that has a raison d'etre behind it that I feel is important then that's the best for me.

I dont really write with the idea of trying to teach any lessons. I want to tell a story as truthfully and engagingly as I can, and then let the chips fall where they may.

I don't care about the size of the roles, or how they're marketed or billed or anything like that. I would love to be a part of stories that tell us about where we've come from, where we are, where we're going - with great directors.

What you demand from storytelling is a moral - even political - import. I tend to shun that didactic aspect.

I love when people laugh. I love when they cry, I like a story to say something, and I hope the audience feels happier leaving the theatre than when it came in.

When I'm looking for a strong female character, or a strong character at all, I'm looking for a character that has a purpose in that story, that has an interior life of some sort. They don't have to be physically strong; they don't have to be morally strong or ethically strong, because men and women come in a huge variety of all of those things. Emotionally, ethically - I'm less concerned with that. I just don't want them to be props. That's the only thing that offends me.

So much of today's film culture, in England and America, is based on lies, really. The industry is very ambitious, and success has become such an opium, people start from the wrong place they forget sometimes that the core of what we do is storytelling. It serves a need, a purpose for the individual and society to pull us together in shared experience and help us realize we're not alone in that experience.

You set out to tell a good story. You don't do it because there is a deep message involved, because the movie is almost always bad when you do that. Your job No. 1 is for it to be entertaining, and if it's inspiring, that is great, too.

I want to be involved in a story that makes a difference.

Not all stories are meant for the big screen.

I want to write stories that don't help you escape life, but embrace life.