Top 100 Story Ideas Quotes
#1. My sister and brother are both writers as well. We are constantly discussing story and plot lines. And I love to discuss story ideas with my husband.
Ruta Sepetys
#2. Most of my story ideas come from my childhood. Sometimes they hatch from stories my parents told me, sometimes they come from experiences in my own life, and sometimes they are inspired by mere moments.
Kimberly Willis Holt
#3. I find that writing is the silver lining of life, allowing me to transform vexing experiences into fresh story ideas...after much vexed venting.
Laura Quinn
#4. I do see myself as someone who has a lot of story ideas.
Jill Abramson
#5. I can write two scripts concurrently, but I usually prefer to do one at a time. However, I also usually have 5 or 6 story ideas that are percolating in my head at any one time, so it can get a little crowded in there.
Michael Arndt
#6. You lie awake at 3 in the morning thinking of story ideas. You're online at 8 a.m. on a Sunday or midnight on a Wednesday. It's a job that you never push aside.
James Daly
#7. It's weird: I was in a conference room, shouting out story ideas in the voices of different characters, and it was something I had to learn because I'd never been in that atmosphere. But I think I had a quick learning curve, because this is the job I was supposed to have.
Mindy Kaling
#9. I believe that stories find writers, writers don't find stories. With the 'Pendragon' series, I actually had multiple story ideas and decided that instead of writing them individually, I would create a character whose journey would thread them all together.
D.J. MacHale
#10. Everybody walks past a thousand story ideas every day. The good writers are the ones who see five or six of them. Most people don't see any.
Orson Scott Card
#11. I see story ideas. All the time. They're everywhere. Just walking around like normal ideas. They don't know they're stories.
Jennifer Brozek
#12. I have these huge black foam boards on the wall, and tacked to them, I have these white punch cards with my story ideas, scenes and notes.
Robert Crais
#13. I hate SF books that think all you need to make a book is cool technology and mind-bending ideas without a decent plot or characters. And I hate when fantasy books are allowed to ramble off into five hundred page diatribes which don't advance the story one bit.
Chris Wooding
#14. Without compassion, we will never know anyone or anything, not even our own story. Too much judgment, too many ideas and attitudes will stand in the way of the fundamental principle that we are similar to, connected with, and part of everything else.
Deena Metzger
#15. Mere Christianity allows us to understand Christian ideas; the Narnia stories allow us to step inside and experience the Christian story and judge it by its ability to make sense of things and "chime in" with our deepest intuitions about truth, beauty, and goodness. If
Alister E. McGrath
#16. The story of practically every great fortune starts with the day when a creator of ideas and a seller of ideas got together and worked in harmony.
Napoleon Hill
#17. The idea of starting with that Kanye [West] song is declarative. It says, "This is the kind of story we're telling."
Akiva Goldsman
#18. Now and again thousands of memories
converge, harmonize,
arrange themselves around a central idea
in a coherent form,
and I write a story.
Katherine Anne Porter
#19. Real change comes from finding and embracing and connecting and amplifying those that are inclined to like you and believe in you. Ideas spread from person to person, not so much from you to them. So find your biggest fans and give them a story to tell.
Seth Godin
#20. There are a million ideas in a world of stories. Humans are storytelling animals. Everything's a story, everyone's got stories, we're perceiving stories, we're interested in stories. So to me, the big nut to crack is to how to tell a story, what's the right way to tell a particular story.
Richard Linklater
#21. It's a lot more than clicking the shutter ... it's the ideas, it's the visual voice, it's the telling the story, it's kind of going beyond that initial thing that just means you happened to be there at the right time.
Ron Haviv
#22. Once I'm given an idea for a story I have a million ideas on how it should be illustrated, but I don't have a big shoebox full of unfinished ideas.
Brian Selznick
#23. Never submit an idea or chapter to an editor or publisher, no matter how much he would like you to. Writing from the approved idea is (another) gravely serious time-waster. This is your story. Try and find out what your editor wants in advance, but then try and give it to him in one piece.
John Creasey
#24. If imagination, as we've said, is the "region of discovery," story is the wardrobe door, sending our young people "further in" and "still further in" to possibilities and ideas they've never dreamed.
Sarah Arthur
#25. I always tell people I write songs, but I'm a writer. It's a difference. I can write songs to music, but I can write a story. I can see ideas spark in me.
Ester Dean
#26. Richards and Maureen Sherbondy, also contributed their ideas at various points in the story, as did my sister, Joann Scanlon, and my assistant,
Diane Chamberlain
#27. A lot of young black people in America, and even in Africa and Brazil, would say that they are telling their story, but most of the films are like application forms with the formulaic ideas of Hollywood.
Haile Gerima
#28. It was Rick's Rubin idea to have the 'Brooklyn' verse repeat. It already was a story, but having that made it a folk song. Instead of this rambling march of verses, Rick understands that music needs hooks. You need that repeated chorus, that everyone can sing along to.
Scott Avett
#29. Most of my stories are ideas in action. In other words, I get a concept, and I let it run away. I find a character to act out the idea. And then the story takes care of itself.
Ray Bradbury
#30. I feel like the only reason we're able to find some of these unique ideas, characters, and story twists is through discovery. And, by definition, 'discovery' means you don't know the answer when you start.
Ed Catmull
#31. I have people constantly come up to me telling me that I have written their life. When I wrote the story I thought it was a pretty good story but I had no idea that many people felt like that.
Blackie
#32. My God may not be your idea of God, but one thing I know of my God he makes me a humanitarian. I am a proud Jew because we gave the world the Bible and the story of Joseph.
Albert Einstein
#33. The story of humans is the story of ideas that shine light into dark corners.
Jill Tarter
#34. Actually ideas are everywhere. It's the paperwork, that is, sitting down and thinking them into a coherent story, trying to find just the right words, that can and usually does get to be labor.
Fred Saberhagen
#35. I dont really write with the idea of trying to teach any lessons. I want to tell a story as truthfully and engagingly as I can, and then let the chips fall where they may.
Ann Brashares
#36. When I have something to say that I think will be too difficult for adults, I write it in a book for children. Children are excited by new ideas; they have not yet closed the doors and windows of their imaginations. Provided the story is good ... nothing is too difficult for children.
Madeleine L'Engle
#37. 'The Sea Wolf' is the story of a man who believes only in brute force. He is so firm in belief in his own ideas that he despises all who disagree with him. He preaches the doctrine of intolerance. He flaunts the notion that democracy is anything but weakness.
Ida Lupino
#38. Before I start writing, before I have an idea of where and when the story happens, I research it thoroughly.
Isabel Allende
#39. That is a complicated matter. The heart of the tale and the ideas behind it are simple. Time has altered and condensed their nuances, made them more than story, greater than the sums of their parts. But that requires time. The truest tales require time and familiarity to become what they are.
Erin Morgenstern
#40. Each time there is a news story, sometimes that gives ideas to people who then turn into criminals.
Nicolas Sarkozy
#41. If something isn't working, if you have a story that you've built and it's blocked and you can't figure it out, take your favorite scene, or your very best idea or set-piece, and cut it. It's brutal, but sometimes inevitable.
Joss Whedon
#42. What I ended up doing was kind of crafting an idea for a story, presenting it to a writer - a dear friend of mine, Brad Mirman - and he ended up writing a beautiful script. I should've done that a lot earlier.
Kiefer Sutherland
#43. The idea led me into the research, which continues to give me more ideas for the story.
Jean M. Auel
#44. I think it is harder to write a story that appeals to the intellect. But, when you tie onto one, you can do it quite deeply. It really depends on the type of idea you have to begin with.
Stephen King
#45. Writing your own story around the same ideas is not plagiarism; at worst, it's being unoriginal.
Charles Stross
#46. Images are not quite ideas, they are stiller than that, with less implication outside themselves. And they are not myth, they do not have the explanatory power; they are nearer to pure story. Nor are they always metaphors; they do not say this is that, they say this is.
Robert Hass
#47. The trick to finding ideas is to convince yourself that everyone and everything has a story.
Malcolm Gladwell
#48. I've had various experiences where I've been called by Hollywood studios to look at a script or comment on various scientific ideas that they're trying to inject into a story.
Brian Greene
#49. With me, a story usually begins with a single idea or mental picture. The writing of the story is simply a matter of working up to that moment, to explain why it happened or what caused it to follow.
William Faulkner
#50. Who were the fools who spread the story that brute force cannot kill ideas? Nothing is easier. And once they are dead they are no more than corpses.
Simone Weil
#51. Who wants to put together something that will bear some relationship to the vision or memory or experience or story or idea or dream or whatever.
Sharon Olds
#52. I would rather read a poorly structured story that has fresh ideas than a tightly structured one with cliches.
Douglas Wood
#53. Working on the plot/story idea for my next novel ... It always takes time.
Nicholas Sparks
#54. Even films without music are inspiring, as I think a good story is full of changes, different paces, and ideas.
Volker Bertelmann
#55. I write and write and write, and then I edit it down to the parts that I think are amusing, or that help the storyline, or I'll write a notebook full of ideas of anecdotes or story points, and then I'll try and arrange them in a way that they would tell a semi-cohesive story.
Al Yankovic
#56. Doing a love story as a genre, and looking at love stories in movies, and feeling like I learned stuff about that, and that it broadened my view and my idea of what I can do, and how I can work with the people around me, that was such a great, really satisfying experience.
Todd Haynes
#57. When I find research really rewarding is when one piece of information gives you an idea for a story. That's when it's great.
Markus Zusak
#58. I don't know where ideas come from. They come from outer space or God, if you like, or from my subconscious mind. But I never go ou self-consciously looking for a story.
Richard Adams
#59. The ideas aren't that important. Really they aren't. Everyone's got an idea for a book, a movie, a story, a TV series.
Neil Gaiman
#60. I am just diving into life again. I just have nothing new to offer right now as an idea for a book. I feel like if I were to write something, I would probably repeat the same idea in a different story.
Karan Bajaj
#61. I lack the skill to hold a story line for the length required for a novel or even a short story. I have never had an idea that could withstand a hundred thousand words, or even ten thousand words of rubber meeting the road.
Henry Rollins
#62. Good ideas stay with you until you eventually write the story.
Brian Keene
#63. I'm probably more character-driven than plot-driven. It's rare for me to attach myself to an idea for a story.
Steven Soderbergh
#64. I have a nice little idea from some people I met there who are now in their seventies, and I want to tell their story about the revolution through the eyes of musicians, in fact. The '59 Revolution. And what has happened to them since. It's very much a Cuban story. They haven't fared too well.
John Gimlette
#65. An idea for a story can be anything. The sky is not the limit, the limit is beyond it.
Chrys Fey
#66. I don't really have a method or a technical process. I studied [Sanford] Meisner, and that's the thing that really works for me. That sort of instinctual, in the moment, what the other actors do, working off them and letting the story unfold, as opposed to having an idea of what the story should be.
Maria Bello
#67. It is not about whether you are an executive, a studio or a network. If you have a story or an idea you can build a following for it.
Kevin Spacey
#68. I don't really control the story. I just let it go where it wants to go. I have no idea what's going to happen in the end or who's going to live, so it's kind of like me saying, "I don't know, guys! Just wait." That's what I'm doing!
Veronica Roth
#69. What I've realized is that a film operates both on the intellectual and emotional levels, and if you can find a way to tell a riveting story and draw ideas out of that, it's very powerful.
Dinesh D'Souza
#70. A book is a better way to develop a complicated idea, or to tell a big story and to show how ideas weave in and out of each other, which is something that comes up a lot in happiness because all these ideas are interconnected.
Gretchen Rubin
#71. [Footnote:] The head of a Pike, served at supper, is said to have caused the death from terror of Theodoric the Goth, who imagined the fish's features to be those of Symmachus, a man he had just killed. But for this story, we of today would have no idea what Symmachus looked like.
Will Cuppy
#72. This book is the story of the birth, growth, and future of one of the most powerful and dangerous ideas in the history of science:
Siddhartha Mukherjee
#73. The themes, ideas and the characters from 'Skyfall' can obviously continue on, because it is a franchise, and it is an ongoing story.
John Logan
#74. First, we break bread and drink wine together, telling the story of Jesus and his death, because Jesus knew that this set of actions would explain the meaning of his death in a way that nothing else
no theories, no clever ideas
could ever do.
N. T. Wright
#75. Keep it simple. Trust your imagination. Discover what is unique about your imagination. Don't simply read a story and copy it.
I go into myself. Then I transcribe what visions I have. If those ideas are original, and you are devoted, you will go far.
Clive Barker
#76. I keep on having ideas and developments. Some happen and some don't, but I still always have a way of telling a story.
John Waters
#77. When I am grappling with ideas which are radical enough to upset grown-ups, then I am likely to put these ideas into a story which will be marketed for children, because children understand what their parents have rejected and forgotten.
Madeleine L'Engle
#78. Before I start, I trick myself into thinking I know what's going to happen in the story, but the characters have ideas of their own, and I always go with the character's choices. Most of the time I discover plot twists and directions that are better than what I originally had planned.
Neal Shusterman
#79. "A meteor hits planet Earth" - that's a story idea but that doesn't give me any indication of what the character is.
Steven Soderbergh
#80. The thing I have learned through the years is that one idea 'doth' not a novel make. A novel must be several seemingly unrelated ideas that somehow magically come together to create the fabric of the story.
Katherine Paterson
#81. It was the idea of facing a future skimming the surface of life, winging my way in and out of other people's crises, confusions, and passages, engaging them enough to get the story, but never enough to be indelibly touched by what I had seen or heard.
Anna Quindlen
#82. Every good story is of course both a picture and an idea, and the more they are interfused the better.
Henry James
#84. Most young people make films to be accepted, to be discovered, when in fact that was the last idea with the group I went to film school with. To be discovered was not our intention. Our intention was to tell our story our way, and make our own mistakes and learn from film to film.
Haile Gerima
#85. As sculptors chip away the stone in order to find the statue, writers chip away extraneous verbiage so readers can see the shape of an idea clearly. My gift is to see through the confusion, to bring order and simplicity to a story.
Leslie Parrish
#87. I think the idea of a traditional story being told using traditional animation is likely a thing of the past,
Jeffrey Katzenberg
#88. Brainstorming, for me, takes place in my bed at night between the time I turn out my lights and I finally fall asleep. It is not a very violent storm, but what's happening is I am just thinking about different ideas and maybe things I've seen that day that I think might make a good story.
Chris Van Allsburg
#89. You don't always want to be using the music in a way to express ideas inherent that are on the screen. You might want to work more around the fringes of the story, and work more with the subtext, and add more depth to the story through the use of music.
Howard Shore
#90. If you haven't got an idea, start a story anyway. You can always throw it away, and maybe by the time you get to the fourth page you will have an idea, and you'll only have to throw away the first three pages.
William Campbell Gault
#91. We have so many ideas and beliefs about ourselves. We told ourselves story about what we want and who we are, smart or kind. Often these are the unexamined and limited ideas of others that we have internalized and then gone on to live out
Jack Kornfield
#92. I wanted to be of service to the Peace League, and how could I better do so than by trying to write a book which should propagate its ideas? And I could do it most effectively, I thought, in the form of a story.
Bertha Von Suttner
#93. I'm not a World War II buff. I know a little bit about it, I was taught the other side of the story in school, so it was unfamiliar to me, the idea of a German resistance, and yet it was considerable.
Bill Nighy
#94. I would like a food/lifestyle show. We're not sure what that is yet. I want to be able to share what I do and how I raise my family. I feel like I have a story to tell. I enjoy talking and listening, sharing ideas and sharing advice.
Cat Cora
#95. I drove from New York to California by myself. The iconography of travel and escape is everywhere in my photographs ... So actually becoming a runaway was crucial. I had this idea that I'd make my way across the frontier and find my story as it was actually happening in the landscape.
Justine Kurland
#96. If you want to see the consequences of ideas, write a story. If you want to see the consequences of belief, write a story in which somebody is acting on the ideas or beliefs that she has.
Charles Baxter
#97. My ideas often come from strong mental images. When I'm observing some relatively ordinary thing, I'll think, "What if ... " and out of that brainstorming a story emerges.
Cassandra Clare
#98. The story of the whale swallowing Jonah, though a whale is large enough to do it, borders greatly on the marvelous; but it would have approached nearer to the idea of a miracle if Jonah had swallowed the whale.
Thomas Paine
#99. Some of the ideas are kind of inspired by the songs, and I always want to use music to tell the story and give the movie a certain kind of mood. That's always essential to me.
Wes Anderson
#100. The idea that you could stitch together every detail episode to episode and preserve continuity for the length of a season and tell a story while using no time cuts, no flashbacks, nothing but pure real time just seemed too difficult.
Michael Loceff
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