Story: Style, Structure, Substance, and the Principles of Screenwriting Quotes

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Deus ex machina not only erases all meaning and emotion, it's an insult to the audience. Each of us knows we must choose and act, for better or worse, to determine the meaning of our lives...Deus ex machina is an insult because it is a lie.

Story: Style, Structure, Substance, and the Principles of Screenwriting

Most of life's actions are within our reach, but decisions take willpower.

Story: Style, Structure, Substance, and the Principles of Screenwriting

A fine work of art - music, dance, painting, story - has the power to silence the chatter in the mind and lift us to another place.

Story: Style, Structure, Substance, and the Principles of Screenwriting

In a world of lies and liars, an honest work of art is always an act of social responsibility.

Story: Style, Structure, Substance, and the Principles of Screenwriting

Whereas life separates meaning from emotion, art unites them. Story is an instrument by which you create such epiphanies at will, the phenomenon known as aesthetic emotion...Life on its own, without art to shape it, leaves you in confusion and chaos,...

Story: Style, Structure, Substance, and the Principles of Screenwriting

Boredom is the inner conflict we suffer when we lose desire, when we lack a lacking.

Story: Style, Structure, Substance, and the Principles of Screenwriting

True character is revealed in the choices a human being makes under pressure - the greater the pressure, the deeper the revelation, the truer the choice to the character's essential nature.

Story: Style, Structure, Substance, and the Principles of Screenwriting

Given the choice between trivial material brilliantly told versus profound material badly told, an audience will always choose the trivial told brilliantly.

Story: Style, Structure, Substance, and the Principles of Screenwriting

No civilization, including Plato's, has ever been destroyed because its citizens learned too much.

Story: Style, Structure, Substance, and the Principles of Screenwriting

In comedy laughter settles all arguments.

Story: Style, Structure, Substance, and the Principles of Screenwriting

Good story' means something worth telling that the world wants to hear. Finding this is your lonely task...But the love of a good story, of terrific characters and a world driven by your passion, courage, and creative gifts is still not enough. Your ...

Story: Style, Structure, Substance, and the Principles of Screenwriting

When talented people write badly, it's generally for one of two reasons: Either they're blinded by an idea they feel compelled to prove of they're driven by an emotion they must express. When talented people write well, it is generally for this reaso...

Story: Style, Structure, Substance, and the Principles of Screenwriting

Do research. Feed your talent. Research not only wins the war on cliche, it's the key to victory over fear and it's cousin, depression.

Story: Style, Structure, Substance, and the Principles of Screenwriting

Angry contradiction of the patriarch is not creativity; it's delinquency calling for attention. Difference for the sake of difference is as empty an achievement as slavishly following the commercial imperative.

Story: Style, Structure, Substance, and the Principles of Screenwriting

All writing is discipline, but screenwriting is a drill sergeant.

Story: Style, Structure, Substance, and the Principles of Screenwriting

Anxious, inexperienced writers obey rules. Rebellious, unschooled writers break rules. Artists master the form.

Story: Style, Structure, Substance, and the Principles of Screenwriting

When we want mood experiences, we go to concerts or museums. When we want meaningful emotional experience, we go to the storyteller.

Story: Style, Structure, Substance, and the Principles of Screenwriting

We realize we can't go around saying and doing what we're actually thinking and feeling. If we all did that, life would be a lunatic asylum. Indeed, that's how you know you're talking to a lunatic. Lunatics are those poor souls who have lost their in...

Story: Style, Structure, Substance, and the Principles of Screenwriting