Suspenseful Narrative Quotes

When you're watching a Hitchcock movie, you, for most of the movie, are playing the guessing game. What's the endgame? What's the plot? How are these people involved? It's the best way to tell the story, and as a viewer, that's what you want to experience.

The thing with '24' is that because it moves so much, it's a challenge, and sometimes things get revealed about these characters as you go.

All we think about is how to keep the audience engaged, and normally we're big on plot because that's the easy way to do it.

'The Hunger Games' for me is I love the books so much and the character and the story were incredible. That's kind of the game plan is just do really interesting stories with interesting characters.

I like a book better if I can't predict what's going to happen.

Even within escapist cinema, if you find a good story to tell, it will do well.

If Elmore Leonard met Jim Thompson down a dark alley at midnight they might emerge a week later with thick beards, bloodshot eyes and the manuscript for THE BIG O.

The horror genre is vast and full of brilliance. Stephen King, Shirley Jackson, Herman Melville, the book of Esther. I'll happily join that list.

After I read 'The Hunger Games,' I went out and got 'Catching Fire' the next day.

Michael Koryta is that rare author who is at once a compelling story teller and a fantastic writer. From the first sentence of THOSE WHO WISH ME DEAD, you'll be under his spell. His characters are living, breathing people you'll care about; his setting is a place you'll visit and stay-long after you've decided to leave because you're scared. You can't leave; you're trapped. There are too many nerve-jangling, beautifully written, razor sharp moments and you won't want to miss a single one. This is an absolute sizzler.

I'm always in awe at how fast television is and how quickly you're called upon to be 100 percent invested in a character with the lines.

As a filmmaker, I tilt towards stories which are crime-led.

'The Turnaround' isn't even really a crime novel. But you need conflict to make a novel, any kind of novel, and I don't know any other way to do it than crime.

I tried to buy the script of 'Hancock.' I loved it. The script was far darker and edgier than the movie.

Entertainment works by withholding content with the purpose of increasing its value. And, when you think about it, those two are just vastly different approaches, but they can be bridged.

A modern-day Dickens with a popular voice and a genius for storytelling in any genre, Stephen King has written many wonderful books.

Young adults are honest readers. They won't stay with a book unless they have a reason, so it has to move along.

When I started writing 'Luck in the Shadows,' I just wanted to create an adventure story.

It's awesome to see something like 'Inception', which is just mind-blowing and amazing, and it actually resonates with the audiences. I feel like that's rare.

The term 'psychological thriller' is an elastic one these days, tagged liberally on to any story of suspense that explores motivations while keeping blood and chainsaws to a minimum.

I think 'Inception' was a sick idea, but they didn't do it correctly.

Damon Lindelof is hypnotizing. His imagination is without limits, and Tom Perrotta, as well. You begin to just trust, completely, where the story is going, knowing that you're entirely safe in the truthfulness of it.

Sometimes it feels as if the artist hasn't done the real work of engaging with the material. Film noir can't just play off looks and attitudes. A thriller needs a dose of genuine suspense. It does not have to be literal, but it does have to feel genuine. Otherwise the artist is just leeching off the form.

What was so great about Lost was that it came to the front door as a drama that was straight-up and really gave you the sci-fi underneath it all. It backed into sci-fi show, at least in my opinion. As soon as they got hooked, they were like, "Okay, I'm there."

I always set out to tell a good story, to create a character that young people can relate to, place them in a situation that will be interesting, intriguing, eventually suspenseful. But what I find is that after I do that, then there are themes that emerge, which teachers can then use to provoke discussion and debate.