#tellin

...required for good fiction: character, conflict, change through time. And if you're really blessed, you get resolution. But life doesn't usually work out that way. ↗

— Ted Conover

#new-journalism #on-fiction #storytelling #writing #change

Basically, I hate conformity. I hate people telling me what to do. It makes me want to smash things. So-called normal behaviour patterns make me so bored, I could throw up! ↗

— Wendy O. Williams

#behaviour #bored #conformity #could #hate

To paraphrase Muggeridge: Everything is a parable that God is speaking to us, the art of life is to get the message. ↗

— Chester Elijah Branch

#parables #screenwriting #storytelling #television #art

The combination of razor-sharp wit (completely real) and his credentials (completely fake) had won them over in the end. ↗

— Priya Ardis

#chick-lit #coming-of-age #e-books #ebooks #fairy-tales

Every morning brings us news of the globe, and yet we are poor in noteworthy stories. This is because no event comes to us without being already shot through with explanation. In other words, by now almost nothing that happens benefits storytelling; almost everything benefits information. Actually, it is half the art of storytelling to keep a story free from explanation as one reproduces it. . . . The most extraordinary things, marvelous things, are related with the greatest accuracy, but the psychological connection of the event is not forced on the reader. It is left up to him to interpret things the way he understands them, and thus the narrative achieves an amplitude that information lacks. ↗

— Walter Benjamin

#art

The boy thought, How powerful a story is, and how by a kind of magic it compels the imagination; there was nothing in the world, it seemed to him, so mysteriously strong; and he began to wonder if he would ever have anything as beautiful to tell. ↗

— Glenway Wescott

#beauty

I tell the story to you now, but in each telling the story itself changes a little, changes direction, and that in turn changes you and me. So be very careful not only in how you repeat it but in how you remember it, goslings. More often than you realize it, the world is shaped by two things -- stories told and the memories they leave behind. ↗

— Vera Nazarian

#evolution #fiction #future #influence #literature

The enormity of problems like hunger and social injustice can certainly motivate us to act. We can be convinced logically of the need for intervention and change. But it is the story of one individual that ultimately makes the difference—by offering living proof. ↗

— John Capecci and Timothy Cage

#activism-inspiration #advocacy #personal-story #story #storytelling

In the end nothing matters but the work. You can’t control how it’s taken, and the act of telling a story always involves a gap. Sometimes confusion is the risk of ambiguity–I say that to students all the time. It’s true at the fireside and it’s true in the parlor, and it’s true in made-up towns and New York. Two humans face one another, words come out of one, words go into the other mind through the ears and eyes of the listener. It’s a story. It’s simple. The gap is the thing. Make sure you build the bridge. ↗

— Patrick Somerville

#storytelling #writing #communication

Human stories are practically always about one thing, really, aren't they? Death. The inevitability of death. . . . . . (quoting an obituary) 'There is no such thing as a natural death. Nothing that ever happens to man is natural, since his presence calls the whole world into question. All men must die, but for every man his death is an accident, and even if he knows it he would sense to it an unjustifiable violation.' Well, you may agree with the words or not, but those are the key spring of The Lord Of The Rings ↗

— J.R.R. Tolkien

#j-r-r-tolkien #life-and-death #life-story #lord-of-the-rings #lotr