Narrative Structure Quotes

• A lack of narrative structure, as you know, will cause anxiety.

  John Dufresne

  Anxiety, Causes, Knows

  John Dufresne (2014). “No Regrets, Coyote”, p.7, Serpent's Tail

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• The ultimate for me would be to do a feature that didn't require any narrative structure.

  Johnny Depp

  Would Be, Ultimate, Features

  "Going deep with rebel Johnny Depp" by Ron Dicker, articles.baltimoresun.com. July 8, 2003.

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• The F.B.I. was very happy with the article they produced, which was entitled, "The Black Merchants of Hate," that came out in early 1963. What's significant about that piece is that that became the template for what evolved into the basic narrative structure of The Autobiography of Malcolm X.

  Manning Marable

  Hate, Black, Pieces

  "The Undiscovered Malcolm X: Stunning New Info on the Assassination, His Plans to Unite the Civil Rights and Black Nationalist Movements & the 3 'Missing' Chapters from His Autobiography". "Democracy Now!" with Amy Goodman, www.democracynow.org. February 21, 2005.

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• The easier an experience, or the more entrenched, or the more familiar, the fainter our sensation of it becomes. This is true of chocolate and marriages and hometowns and narrative structures. Complexities wane, miracles become unremarkable, and if we're not careful, pretty soon we're gazing out at our lives as if through a burlap sack.

  Anthony Doerr

  Miracle, Chocolate, Gazing

  Anthony Doerr (2008). “Four Seasons in Rome: On Twins, Insomnia, and the Biggest Funeral in the History of the World”, p.54, Simon and Schuster

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• I had never thought that I would be involved in narrative structures. As a young guy, I was more interested in abstract modeling. But as I got older, I began to see that there was no reason to limit myself to any intellectual or conceptual postulate, when in fact I'm a professional student of music.

  Anthony Braxton

  Guy, Intellectual, Would Be

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• True terror is a language and a vision. There is a deep narrative structure to terrorist acts, and they infiltrate and alter consciousness in ways that writers used to aspire to.

  Don DeLillo

  Vision, Literature, Way

  Don DeLillo, Thomas DePietro (2005). “Conversations with Don DeLillo”, p.84, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• He managed to do this 'tour de force' of styles without ever breaking the narrative structure of the chapter he was writing. It is the most brilliant parody of writing styles that I have ever read.

  Frederick Lenz

  Writing, Style, Rama

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• In fact, I always assumed that most everything I read was true, to one degree or another. I couldn't articulate this fact until after I read Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried and he discussed Happening Truth, Story Truth, and Emotional Truth. I always understood that the facts of The Sun Also Rises or On the Road were the facts as dictated by a certain narrative structure, but because the experiences of those characters echoed my own feelings about the world. I knew there was a Happening Truth behind them.

  Kevin Keck

  Character, Emotional, Feelings

  Source: therumpus.net

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• That is many poets don't know how to tell a story and they don't have a sense of how to put things in order to tell a story and we thought the poets could learn from fiction writers something about developing a character over time who wasn't just you and also creating a narrative structure.

  Edward Hirsch

  Character, Order, Creating

  Big Think interview, bigthink.com.

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• But most critically, sweet, never try to change the narrative structure of someone else's story, though you will certainly be tempted to, as you watch those poor souls in school, in life, heading unwittingly down dangerous tangents, fatal digressions from which they will unlikely be able to emerge. Resist the temptation. Spend your energies on your story. Reworking it. Making it better.

  Marisha Pessl

  Sweet, School, Temptation

  Marisha Pessl (2006). “Special Topics in Calamity Physics”, p.83, Penguin

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