Makers Quote by Jean de La Fontaine

Once somebody's aware of a plot, it's like a bone sticking out. If it breaks through the skin, it's very ugly.

— Louis Auchincloss

When you're reading a novel, I think the reason you care about how any given plot turns out is that you take it as…

— Elif Batuman

Considerations of plot do a great deal of heavy lifting when it comes to long-form narrative - readers will overlook the most ham-fisted prose…

— Lynn Coady

The rule for finding plots for character-centered novels, which is to ask: 'So what's the worst possible thing I can do to *this* guy?'…

— Lois McMaster Bujold

In order to have a plot, you have to have a conflict, something bad has to happen.

— Mike Judge

Plots are ... what the writer sees with.

— Eudora Welty

Plot is people. Human emotions and desires founded on the realities of life, working at cross purposes, getting hotter and fiercer as they strike…

— Leigh Brackett

The fiction writer has a lot of balls to juggle. Setting, pacing, dialogue, and so on. And let's not forget: plot. That was always…

— Cate Marvin

The quality of this novel is the way the plot is treated and not the plot itself.

— Anonymous

In male-driven [films], the protagonist is not the person who's necessarily in harms way. There's a sense that they're going to figure out how…

— Todd Haynes

All good plots come from well-orchestrated characters pitted against one another in a conflict of wills.

— James N. Frey

[E]very plot, worth the name, must be elaborated to its dénouement before anything be attempted with the pen. It is only with the dénouement…

— Edgar Allan Poe