Just like all great stories, our fears focus our attention on a question that is as important in life as it is in literature: What will happen next?
Love stories seek to demonstrate the great truth of love: that we discover eternity in a moment that dies immediately after.
I'd like to see 'Top Chef: Amateur'. Sometimes we have an amateur chef on the show and they just can't cut it against the pros but there are some great stories there.
I do feel that if you can write one good sentence and then another good sentence and then another, you end up with a good story.
All good, clean stories are melodrama; it's just the set of devices that determines how you show or hide it.
I began to be impressed by what made a good book-how you needed to have a sensible story, a plot that developed, with a beginning, a middle, and an end that would tie everything together.
When it all boils down, it's about embracing each others' stories and maybe even finding that synergy to collaborate for the common good.
I love intricate plotting and exciting twists, but I realize more that people enjoy a good story in a simple, focused way.
Brushing up on your short game at the practice area is fine and good, but taking it with you to the golf course - when your score is really on the line - is another story.
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.
You can take a handful of dollars, a good story, and people with passion and make a movie that will stand up against any $70 million movie.
It's rare that you cut out something that is really good. You screen all of it, and when the audience doesn't respond, you cut out whatever is holding the story down.
Naturally, I mine my girlfriends' lives for good anecdotes and stories - so many of their experiences find their way into my books.
I like comedies, I like thrillers, I like love stories. Everything is beautiful; it depends if the film is good, who cares? Everything is interesting.
With any good story, you need the adversary, the heroes and villains. You need a good mixture to make it work.
History is full of really good stories. That's the main reason I got into this racket: I want to make the argument that history is interesting.
It doesn't matter if it's black-and-white. If a movie has a story that is filled with emotion, you can have as much pleasure, and it's very good for cinema.
When I think of a story, somehow it just always seems to come out involving spooks and spies and government skullduggery.
People like scary stories. There's a fascination with fear themes, and we want to face those things in a weird, subconscious way.
Biblical movies need not sermonize, just be honest to the foundational story. As powerful as the message is for people of faith, it's really great storytelling.
Religious belief, like history itself, is a story that is always unfolding, always subject to inquiry and ripe for questioning. For without doubt there is no faith.
