As a writer, you must know what promise your story or novel makes. Your reader will know.
The short story is an imploding universe. It has all the boil of energy inside it. A novel has shrapnel going all over the place. You can have a mistake in a novel. A short story has to be perfect.
The secret story is the one we'll never know, although we're living it from day to day, thinking we're alive, thinking we've got it all under control and the stuff we overlook doesn't matter.
Conservative talk radio works because there are lots of conservatives who are convinced that they are not getting the whole story from the regular media.
My friend Markus Zusak wrote a story from the point of view of death, 'The Book Thief.' I thought that's a great idea, where your omniscient narrator is death. I'm glad he had that idea because I wouldn't have been able to work so well with it.
I don't think people really understood what I did. And you know, in my book, 'A Helluva High Note' deals with my back story, that I was a songwriter, that I spent years trying to hone my craft and being rejected and then finally becoming a successful songwriter, record executive and publisher.
My advice to aspiring writers of fantasy trilogies or series is that each book needs two main plots. There's the 'big story', the over-arching grand plot of the entire series, and there is the complete-in-itself, one-book plot.
A story never looks as good as when the other fellow buys it.
I always draw from things around me that people around me have gone through... The story that could be taken really literally is not from my life exactly. But bits and pieces are, and the sentiment behind it is.
I am now working on the second WWI story and find the challenge marvelous.
The story is more important to me than the part.
It is ridiculous to set a detective story in New York City. New York City is itself a detective story.
I think the story is the most ancient form of human entertainment.
I think the story of DiMaggio was alluring precisely for its impossibility.
Plays are wonderfully different than short stories, first because it's a story that's on a stage, but there's a different sort of tension that appears on stage - you get to see your characters in a different way - like with lights.
'Police Story' had some of the best writing on television, and one reason for that is because most of the scripts were based on real cases.
I was seven years old when 'Creepshow' came out, and I'm guessing I was around 10 when I saw it for the first time on VHS. The opening theme reminds me that there are five stories to be told, all so different, and the process of telling a scary story is a dark, glorious trip.
The history of the world is the story of people getting off track.
The story of a love is not important-what is important is that one is capable of love. It is perhaps the only glimpse we are permitted of eternity.
On the last drafts, I focus on the words themselves, including the rub of vowels and consonants, stressed and unstressed syllables. Yet even at this stage I'm often surprised. A different ending or a new character shows up and I'm back to where I began, letting the story happen, just trying to stay out of the way.
Each one of us had a little story to tell and each recording was based on that. Lou played all of the music but we both sort of kicked around some cords during the writing phase.
My life is a lovely story, happy and full of incident.
We're still in the ditch, and the Gennifer Flowers story about Bill Clinton says it all. A tabloid fired several bullets into the air, and the rest of the herd began to stampede.
Whether or not you agree with Ayn Rand - and I have certain issues with some of her beliefs - the woman can tell a story. I mean, the novel as an art form is just in full florid bloom in 'Atlas Shrugged.' It's an unbelievable story. The characters are so compelling, and what she's saying is mind-expanding.
When you make movies, you have to be preoccupied with the social problems, otherwise there is no point in making a movie. To have a story, you need a social problem. Not necessarily a problem, but something to get the idea for a story, otherwise there's no story.
Of course, every time someone does a story on plastic surgery, my name will be dragged up. I've made it safe for other people to have plastic surgery. It's no longer a bad word.
If it has something of substance and a platform that makes sense, I can share my story. You can get a little more into my life, and I can mesh my singing with things I love to do and writing for others and telling my story in hopes of helping someone. I'm all for it.
'West Side Story' was one of the high points of my career. Yet, when I first saw it, I was really disappointed in how I came off.
The casting of 'Slumdog Millionaire' is a dream. Anil Kapoor, as the sleazy TV host, diamonds winking in his earlobes, has never been better; the quietly understated Irrfan Khan turns in another bravura performance as the police inspector whose questioning brings out Jamal's story.
'Story of My Life' was essentially a two-man musical play. In hindsight, I don't know if there was room for a two-man musical on Broadway.
So, when the special effects are at the service of the story and draw you into it, that is really the magic.
It was great as an actor to be given the story line I was given but I didn't expect Craig to stay so it was a lovely twist when I found out they'd decided to keep him.
In the past, if you did film, you couldn't do stage, and if you did film, you certainly didn't do television. You had to pick what you wanted to be. Now it seems like we can bounce around, not only between genres, but between mediums, and I like that. I like change and I like a good story.
We need to have more women founders stepping up to kind of own their own story and ask for what they want and tell success stories and start really building confidence that these stories are out there.
I think it's because it was an emotional story, and emotions come through much stronger in black and white. Colour is distracting in a way, it pleases the eye but it doesn't necessarily reach the heart.
I didn't watch much TV as a kid and I don' t watch it now. I don' t find anything beautiful or unique to the medium, and the only thing you can do on TV that you can't do in film is make a continuing story - which is so cool!
