"The story is not in the plot but in the telling."
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Plot quotes
Plot
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Plot quotes (page 2 of 21)
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"Those blessed structures, plot and rhyme-- why are they no help to me now I want to make something imagined, not recalled?"
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"Characters make their own plot. The dimensions of the characters determine the action of the novel."
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"He who plots to hurt others often hurts himself."
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"I'm not willing to risk more terrorist plots succeeding and more paedophiles going free."
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"I always have a basic plot outline, but I like to leave some things to be decided while I write."
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"Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot. BY ORDER OF THE AUTHOR per G.G., CHIEF OF ORDNANCE"
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"The best laid plot can injure its maker, and often a man's perfidy will rebound on himself."
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"Nor is there any law more just, than that he who has plotted death shall perish by his own plot."
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"Life doesn't have plots and subplots and denouements. It's just a big collection of loose ends and dangling threads that never get explained."
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"PLOT is CHARACTER revealed by ACTION."
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"The whole of life is just like watching a film. Only it's as though you always get in ten minutes after the big picture has started, and no-one will tell you the plot, so you have to work it out all yourself from the clues."
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"Life and career are the same thing. Every life has to have a plot and a plan. You have to recognize this early and be quite cold-blooded in the discovery and articulation of that plot."
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"There's almost always a point in a book where something happens that triggers the rest of the plot."
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"Sometimes I wish that just solving the plot problems was enough. And then elves would go and do all the actual work moving the words around."
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"The best calculation is the absence of calculation. Once you have attained a certain level of recognition, others generally figure that when you do something, it's for an intelligent reason. So it's really foolish to plot out your movements too carefully in advance. You're better off acting capriciously."
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"Some movies I see today have the most dramatic plot points but the actors are not playing them dramatically."
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"Once a novel gets going and I know it is viable, I don't then worry about plot or themes. These things will come in almost automatically because the characters are now pulling the story."
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"Any plot you impose on your characters will be onomatopoetic: PLOT. I say don't worry about plot. Worry about the characters. Let what they say or do reveal who they are, and be involved in their lives, and keep asking yourself, Now what happens? The development of relationship creates plot."
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"So somehow, things that seem extraneous to the play in reality are not. The scene lasts 37 minutes, and you only need 12 minutes of that for the plot. But if you pull the rest of it out, it's not my play."
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