Quotes About Good Storytelling

#1. Good storytelling lets the audience relive events in the present so they can understand the forces, choices, and emotions that led the character to do what he did.

John Truby

#2. Everybody loves a good story, but good storytelling doesn't come easy to everybody. It's a skill that takes a lifetime to master. So study the great stories and then go find some of your own. Your stories will get better the more you tell them.

Austin Kleon

#3. Good storytelling appeals to me - good writing.

Sanaa Lathan

#4. Sometimes I just think that there are more things to be said to make the audience understand what I'm trying to do more. When I'm singing, I don't want you to just hear the melody. I want you to relive the story, because most of the songs have pretty good storytelling.

B.B. King

#5. If I really knew how to do good storytelling, I would be a writer. Mystery is not a huge part of it ... It's tension, it's relationships. I think it's a struggle.

Scott Cohen

#6. Shakespeare is repeated around the world in different languages, just because it's good storytelling.

Cary Fukunaga

#7. Good storytelling is harder than it sounds, but the easy part is that everyone has the ability to do it ... Tap into it.

Peter Guber

#8. I just hope that readers and publishers continue to appreciate good writing and good storytelling in all their various forms. And I hope that people continue to read books, even though we have so many other options for entertainment.

Karen Thompson Walker

#9. Specificity is what makes good storytelling, and good storytelling is what makes money, and making money is then what encourages new producers to invest in different stories about Asians.

Constance Wu

#10. I look for really great characters. I say great because as long as they're really good, there's something you can do. And really good storytelling. And when people ask me what the story is, I say it's really several stories really. They're intermeshed.

Matt Dillon

#11. Good storytelling for me is not so much technical expertise, which I know is applauded often; it's actually freshness of approach. It does mean you sometimes stumble and fall and make a horrible mess of things in seeking that freshness, but you should always keep trying to do that.

Danny Boyle

#12. As writers, we must keep throwing problems at our characters. Conflict is the heart of good storytelling. Hiking in nature along a twisting trail can remind us what a good story feels like. It's the opposite of a treadmill - or an interstate highway.

Kate Klise

#13. I'm not really devoted or specified towards any specific genre at all. I really like it all. There's good storytelling in all the genres, you know. I just want to tell good stories and do good work.

Angela Bettis

#14. To me good storytelling is about journeys. It's about people's journeys, people's discoveries and how they deal with those discoveries; circumstances that put people in different situations.

Scott Cohen

#15. You have to think about good storytelling and characters first. Then hopefully, the rest of that stuff will follow, some more than others. But if you don't have a good film and strong characters, then you don't have anything down the road.

Pete Docter

#16. There's no harmony in most people in a way, and I'm attracted to it, and I think it makes for good storytelling.

Greg Kinnear

#17. The kind of people that love 'The Rocketeer' are the kind of people that love good storytelling and innocence and a better world, so to speak, so they're almost always nice people to bump into.

Billy Campbell

#18. The L Word reaffirmed that good storytelling has a way of creating community. Fans everywhere have been connecting with each other online, in public and at home-viewing parties.

Jennifer Beals

#19. An author must learn the principles of good storytelling only in order to write better from the heart.

Uri Shulevitz

#20. While I don't like violent programs per se, I do like good storytelling, which made me a fan of shows like Breaking Bad and American Horror Story.

Hank Stuever

#21. My brand is good storytelling. I really want [my company] Hillman Grad Productions to be associated with great stories, interesting characters; things that are three-dimensional and feel honest.

Lena Waithe

#22. Good storytelling is humanity's great connector, and it just might keep the world from eating itself.

James Genn

#23. I think that good storytelling of any kind does promote a humility in that it encourages you to see the world the way that other people see it.

Jonathan Dee

#24. It was unpredictable, good storytelling that brought you back each week.

Ted Shackelford

#25. Nothing unleashes curiosity in an audience like good storytelling. Nothing inspires storytelling, in turn, like the results of curiosity.

Brian Grazer

#26. You know what a storyteller is, don't you? It's a person that has a good memory who hopes other people don't.

Sandra Dallas

#27. But as she continued and finished her tale, I could tell that her heart was elsewhere, and when she excused herself to go to bed, she left without saying good night. After that, the princesses in her stories were always beautiful. Always.

Kelly Barnhill

#28. I think that if you have a knack for storytelling, and you work really hard at it, you'll have a chance to tap into something deep. But the fact remains that good sentences are hard won. Any writer worth a lick knows constructing a sentence, a paragraph, or a chapter is hard work.

Adam Ross

#29. Good storytellers are always ready for the next question.

Shannon Wiersbitzky

#30. History is full of blank spaces, but good stories, invariably, are not.

Sara Sheridan

#31. Stories in themselves are not automatically good; it has to be the right kind of story told by the right kind of person.

Douglas Wilson

#32. Lying in small doses makes a good storyteller great.

Bryan Way

#33. Growing up in Ireland, there never seemed to be the notion that children should be seen and not heard. We all looked forward to mealtimes when we'd sit around the table and talk about our days. Storytelling and long, rambling conversations were considered good things.

Maeve Binchy

#34. 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 goal must be a good story well told.

Robert McKee

#35. Good writing is true writing. If a man is making a story up it will be true in proportion to the amount of knowledge of life that he has and how conscientious he is; so that when he makes something up it is as it would truly be.

Ernest Hemingway,

#36. I really do think of it in moral terms. I think that we can't kid ourselves that the storytelling impulse is innocent and does nothing but bring good to the world.

Lynn Coady

#37. In these story telling moments we equip our children, with crucial solution tools for life. To deprive them of these necessary teachable moments is like denying a carpenter the tools of his trade.

Drexel Deal

#38. As long as it comes from the heart, in the end, it will be good.

A.D. Posey

#39. Screw chocolate. A good steak is where it's at.

A.D. Posey

#40. 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

#41. And their days make no story for they were good and joyful and without event

Tanith Lee

#42. Maybe that's why Jesus was so fond of parables: Nothing describes the indescribable like a good yarn.

Cathleen Falsani

#43. From early on there were two things that filled my life - music and storytelling, both of them provoked by my father. He was a jazz pianist and also a very good storyteller, an avid reader. He passed both those interests on to me.

Athol Fugard

#44. Honestly, I don't try to guess at what most people want. I don't think I'd guess right, and I just think that that's not a good recipe for storytelling. I try to write what I like, what I think my friends would like.

Aaron Sorkin

#45. What I know are simple truths. I know that the fabric of memory is reinforced by stories, rent by silences. I know that power dreads memory. I know that memory outlasts power's viciousness. I know . . . that a voiceless man is as good as dead.

Okey Ndibe

#46. I am fascinated by storytelling glue. Anytime I see someone who's good at it, I stop and wonder, 'How'd they 'do this? Why can't I tear myself away?

Robert Krulwich

#47. I always thought storytelling was like juggling [ ... ] You keep a lot of different tales in the air, and juggle them up and down, and if you're good you don't drop any.

Salman Rushdie

#48. Lies are just another kind of storytelling, but with the very distinct and enlivening motive of desperation. Since writers are by nature desperate creatures, they usually do a pretty good (or pretty awful, but always interesting) job of lying.

John Hodgman

#49. While some people are good at painting, playing an instrument or singing, I have been told more than once I am good at storytelling. I hope that you enjoy my stories as I recall them.

Eric Arrouze

#50. A thrilling story can be dull if told badly, but even the most mundane event can be elevated into a tale of epic scale by a good storyteller.

Johnny Rich

#51. 'Orphan Black' allows for people to have debates and theories and allegiances to different characters - to trust characters and hate other characters - but it doesn't tell you who is good or bad or right or wrong. That's the most exciting storytelling, in my book.

Tatiana Maslany

#52. I Write books for the little girl in the adult woman who some man told she was not good enough. Let us dismantle the notion that a woman cannot be free with her sexuality or that she needs a man to make her complete. This one is for the little girls with hearts on their sleeves.

Crystal Evans

#53. When I get tired of new clunky writing, I resort to old fashioned story tellers, like Wilkie Collins.

Sonia Rumzi

#54. Storytelling is storytelling. Good stories need compelling characters and interesting conflicts. That's the bottom line no matter what medium you're writing for.

D.J. MacHale

#55. The marketplace tells us that good, visceral storytelling has a place. But there are lots of questions about the format that stories take.

Paolo Bacigalupi

#56. There's a classic element that all good Disney movies have. It really comes down to the storytelling, I think. It manages to push all of these buttons inside of us; there's a sentimentality.

Mandy Moore

#57. 'Star Wars' is mythology. It's like Greek mythology or Shakespeare. It's the story of good versus evil over a very long span of time. The storytelling is universal and timeless.

Michael Franti

#58. I would say I was challenging the system quite. But I like to think that if the choices I make are slightly unexpected or challenging to people, then that is good. We are definitely three fairly like-minded people in terms of what we value in scripts and in storytelling.

Daniel Radcliffe

#59. All the collaborators of storytelling, in film and television, have to be partly self-centered because they need to do their work the best they can, and that's what makes them really good at what they do, but then they also have to be a part of the socialist society, for the greater good.

Ray McKinnon

#60. Really good 'hard' novels - say, Wolf Hall - yield, if you read them carefully, the information you need when you need it, in order to follow their paths. But there is a point at which subtle storytelling maneuvers outmaneuver their own intelligibility.

Daniel Menaker

#61. I was a Spidey fan as a kid. I always liked the complexity and the teenaged angst that Spider-Man, Peter Parker, always had to deal with. It was kind of a deeper, darker storytelling that just good-guy-beats-bad-guy.

Jack Coleman

#62. Good writing is about finding and exploiting anecdotes that resonate with the reader. In storytelling, it's OK if you only make one point, as long as it's a good one.

Ben Clymer

#63. Combining storytelling, humanity, and laughter will give you a huge advantage in your public speaking and the odds are good that you already have all the raw material you need.

David Nihill

#64. That is the power of a good story. It can encourage you, it can make you laugh, it can bring you joy. It will make you think, it will tap innto your hidden emotions, and it can make you cry. The power of a story can also bring about healing, give you peace, and change your life! (p.15)

Jeff Dixon

#65. When you're a storyteller, part of the process of storytelling is the kind of communion you form with the audience to whom you're telling your story. If some segment of the audience doesn't like that story, it doesn't feel good.

Carlton Cuse

#66. A good picture book can almost be whistled ... All have their own melodies behind the storytelling.

Margaret Wise Brown

#67. I love a good 2,000 year old storytelling fresco!

Joy Baer

#68. Good food warms the heart and feeds the soul.

A.D. Posey

#69. There were good places and bad places to tell stories and there were of course stories that could not be told in any place on earth and these were reserved for heaven.

Gerald Hausman

#70. That's the strange thing about a good story. No pleasure if you can't share it.

Carsten Jensen

#71. The only thing a closed book is good for is a table that wobbles. Be an open book.

A.D. Posey

#72. A good preview makes you can't wait to see the whole movie.

A.D. Posey

#73. We need stories in order to understand ourselves, for good or bad, to be inspired or horrified, it's how we cope with being human and how we decide what type of person we will become.

Lily Graham

#74. I thought I was going to be a ballet dancer for awhile there. I had a good teacher at Interlochen, this arts' academy in Michigan, who taught me the importance of storytelling, and I really responded to that. It seemed like a long shot, but I always play the long odds.

Benjamin Walker

#75. The announcement that you are going to tell a good story (and the chuckle that precedes it) is always a dangerous opening.

Margot Asquith

#76. No matter how good a story is, there is more at stake in the telling.

Rabih Alameddine

#77. Time, it transpires, is not so good at telling after all.

Claire North

#78. Some after-the-fact storytelling is inevitable, and, in fact, very good and useful. But then we want always to be able to enrich the stories, or maybe change the stories with a fresh infusion of specificity.

Nicholson Baker

#79. Woodrell's storytelling is as melodic, jangly and energetic as a good banjo riff ... Sammy Barlach's story is a tragedy, but the telling of it is a pleasure.

Valerie Sayers

#80. That guy in the corner. Never tells the truth, as a matter of principle. Why answer a question, he says, if you can tell a good story instead?

Pete McCarthy

#81. Everybody has a wicked side, whether they are six or sixty, and yet so often storytelling draws a sharp line between good and evil.

Christopher Meledandri

#82. Part of the power of all storytelling is reassurance, offering hope to those sat in the darkness, that good can succeed and wrongdoing fail.

Charles Sturridge

#83. The more intelligent the storytelling becomes and the deeper the character development, people will realize in film and television, like they do in real life, that human beings possess both good and bad.

Robert LaSardo

#84. If you don't think screenwriting is a work of art, good luck in your life without a soul.

A.D. Posey

#85. I love comedy. I love to make people laugh. (But) anything that's telling a good story makes me happy. So, I just like to be part of the storytelling process.

Teryl Rothery

#86. I've thought and thought, but there's no other way to give you the truth except to hide it in a story and let you find your own way inside. All stories contain a truth if you look hard enough - but it might not be a good truth.

Kirsty Logan

#87. Eminem. My son was listening to that and I was like, "What is that junk?" Then I started listening and I thought, You know, that kid is pretty good. It's the storytelling.

Larry Bird

#88. Now it is a strange thing, but things that are good to have and days that are good to spend are soon told about, and not much to listen to; while things that are uncomfortable, palpitating, and even gruesome, may make a good tale, and take a deal of telling anyway.

J.R.R. Tolkien

#89. The same principles that make up a good story also make up a good life.

Donald Miller