Larry Brooks > Quotes

“But writers experience the world and themselves in a unique way. We look for meaning. We see it even when we are not paying attention, which is seldom because, as writers, paying attention is what we do. We are scribes to the ticking of the days, and we have a job to do. We are not at peace unless we are doing it.”
― Larry Brooks

“Most of us are one of two things: blind or chicken-shit. We wouldn't know a crossroads in our lives if it had a set of stoplights and a Denny's.”
― Larry Brooks, Bait and Switch

“If you’ve ever wondered why some writers who, in your humble opinion, don’t write as well as you do yet are rich and famous while you struggle onward, this is the reason. They are great directors.”
― Larry Brooks

“Instinct is the elusive magic that happens when art collides with hard-won craft.”
― Larry Brooks, Story Engineering

“Never hire anyone who starts a sentence with the word "Dude!" and never work for a guy who doesn't know the difference between mute and moot”
― Larry Brooks, Bait and Switch

“Men leave women for other women. Women leave men for another way of life.”
― Larry Brooks, Darkness Bound

“The bar is high. But now you have a ladder.”
― Larry Brooks, Story Engineering

“THE SEVEN KEY CHARACTERIZATION VARIABLES Think of these as realms, as areas of potential character illumination. Here they are, in no particular order: Surface affectations and personality—What the world sees and perceives about a character, including quirks, ticks, habits, and visual presentation. Backstory—All that happened in the character’s life before the story begins that conspires to make him who he is now. Character arc—How the character learns lessons and grows (changes) over the course of the story, how she evolves and conquers her most confounding issues. Inner demons and conflicts—The nature of the issues that hold a character back and define his outlook, beliefs, decisions, and actions. Fear of meeting new people, for example, is a demon that definitely compromises one’s life experience. Worldview—An adopted belief system and moral compass; the manifested outcome of backstory and inner demons. Goals and motivations—What drives a character’s decisions and actions, and the belief that the benefits of those decisions and actions outweigh any costs or compromises. Decisions, actions, and behaviors—The ultimate decisions and actions that are the sum of all of the above. Everything about your characters depends on this final variable, and the degree to which the character’s decisions, actions, and behaviors have meaning and impact depends on how well you’ve manipulated the first six variables before, during, and after the moment of decision or action.”
― Larry Brooks, Story Engineering

“Because, if you haven’t wrapped your head around this principle, chances are you’ll never sell a story.”
― Larry Brooks, Story Engineering

“Writing voice isn’t as much a function of thinking as it is something that eludes definition and therefore assimilation.  The more artful flavors of prose are more often a function of intuition and imitation fused with heart and wit and delivered with a strong does of lyric sensibility. It”
― Larry Brooks, When Every Month is NaNoWriMo

“Mine were the actions of a desperate man. Present a defining moment to one and he'll bite every time.”
― Larry Brooks, Bait and Switch

“Theme and plot relate to character arc. As does structure. Concept relates to theme in that concept sets the stage for the theme to announce itself. And so on, again. The value in separating the core competencies into separate buckets is that we can then clearly understand the definition and criteria for each, which are unique and therefore demanding of fully differentiated understanding, as well as how each relates to the others.”
― Larry Brooks, Story Engineering

“We get to play God with our stories.”
― Larry Brooks, Story Engineering

“Genre is a subset of concept. Setting is a subset of scene execution. Backstory is a subset of character. Subplot is a subset of structure, and unfolds in context to concept. And so on.”
― Larry Brooks, Story Engineering

“the president of Goodwill Industries made $800,000 a year.”
― Larry Brooks, Story Engineering

“The Six Core Competencies do not define or offer a formula. Rather, they define structure driven by criteria for the elements that comprise it.”
― Larry Brooks, Story Engineering

“The fact is men can't handle it. They can't take the heat when it gets ugly. Women, on the other hand, band together in the face of pain. They get strong. And then they get even.”
― Larry Brooks , Darkness Bound

“[on scene execution] Interesting isn't the point...storytelling momentum and relevance is.”
― Larry Brooks, Story Engineering

“Writing is a two-party democracy. To the left are those who write stories from their heart, or according to the other side of the aisle, from the seat of their pants. On the right are those who write stories from a meticulously constructed outline.”
― Larry Brooks, Story Engineering

“The First Plot Point of your story is when the story’s primary tension—its antagonistic force—makes its initial full frontal appearance in a form that imparts meaning and consequence to the story’s hero, and in context to stakes you have already established”
― Larry Brooks, Story Engineering

“Here’s another analogy. Human beings bring only a handful of facial features to the blueprint of how we look—two eyes, two eyebrows, a nose, a mouth, a pair of cheekbones, and two ears, all pasted onto a somewhat ovular-to-round face. That particular blueprint doesn’t often vary much, either. Interestingly enough, this is about the same number of essential storytelling parts and milestones that each and every story needs to showcase in order to be successful. Now, consider this: With only these eleven variables to work with, ask yourself how often you see two people who look exactly alike. In a crowd of ten thousand faces, you would be able to differentiate each and every one of them, other than a set of twins or two in attendance. Where we humans are concerned, the miracle of originality resides in the Creator, who applies an engineering-driven process—eleven variables— to an artistic outcome. Where art is concerned, there is something to be learned from that.”
― Larry Brooks, Story Engineering

“Doing a lot of reading is not the prerequisite to writing.”
― Larry Brooks, Story Engineering

“What if that child survived, and the lineage continues to this day, meaning the ancestors of Christ are walking among us?”
― Larry Brooks, Story Engineering

“The mission of Part 1 is to set up the plot by creating stakes, backstory, and character empathy, while perhaps foreshadowing the forthcoming conflict.”
― Larry Brooks, Story Engineering

“Writers are scribes of the human experience. To write about life we must see it and feel it, and in a way that eludes most … we are alive in a way that others are not. We are all about meaning. About subtext. We notice what others don’t. If the purpose of the human experience is to immerse ourselves in growth and enlightenment, moving closer and closer to whatever spiritual truth you seek - hopefully have a few laughs and a few tears along the way - wearing the nametag of a writer makes that experience more vivid. We’re hands-on with life, and in the process of committing our observations to the page we add value to it for others.”
― Larry Brooks, Story Engineering

“even when we stop typing and leave the house, we remain writers.”
― Larry Brooks, Story Engineering

“writing voice get in the way. Less is more. Sparingly clever or sparsely eloquent is even better.”
― Larry Brooks, Story Engineering

“If you're playing God, you need to get it right.”
― Larry Brooks, Story Engineering

“Storytelling is all about conflict. Some would tell you it’s all about character, but that’s not accurate. Because character depends on conflict to illuminate itself. Every story has conflict, or it’s not a story at all. Conflict is what stands in the way of what the hero needs or wants in the story.”
― Larry Brooks, Story Engineering

“A clever trick does not a concept make.”
― Larry Brooks, Story Engineering