plot

T[he rules of writing] require that the episodes in a tale shall be necessary parts of the tale, and shall help to develop it.

Despite my affection for subtext and plot and prose at its best... life, it turns out, is nothing more than the finer details.

...you mean you don't fit characters into a plot? excatly...

When all the details fit in perfectly, something is probably wrong with the story.

Archive material is a fabulous starting point - individual documents are like signposted roads, heading to a variety of intriguing possibilities.

The person you are (in total, at that moment in time) is what creates the story you're writing. It's infused in every piece of punctuation, in the plot, in the most minor character who crosses the page. It's all your voice.

Not telling everything you know is not the same as telling a lie.

Some days I feel more like a scribe than a creator. I will have the major points fleshed out, but there is always a turn or two that I didn't see coming, or which came earlier than I expected it to, or not at all...

The biggest twist in fiction might be a story ending exactly how you thought it would.

If you write then you are reborn because by writing about the moment, you can relive it for a second time.

Plot joined the expedition unwooed, as a necessary companion. It was not the scout. The scout was a certain mood. I followed that mood, and let the shape of the story flow from that.

A novel is a tricky thing to map.

He had no big plan for this. He had not prepared for the day when he would be fighting his own work. He had not plotted against his own plots.

Christ in a Pinata` how have I over complicated the plot?

A life without trouble and tragedy is boring and not a plot for comedy.

(In reply to the question, 'Would you like some suggestions for a plot for your next book?')There are three problems with getting plot suggestions from other people. The first is that ideas are the easy part of writing; finding the time and energy to get them down on paper is the hard part. I have plenty of ideas already. Which brings me to the second problem: the ideas that excite you, the ones you think would make a terrific book, are not necessarily the same ideas that excite me. And if a writer isn't excited about an idea, she generally doesn't turn out a terrific book, even if the idea is terrific. And the third problem with my using your suggestions is that, theoretically, you could sue me if I did, and that tends to make publishers nervous, which makes it hard to sell a book. So thank you, but no.

Don't resist the urge to burn down the stronghold, kill off the main love interest or otherwise foul up the lives of your characters.

The truth is that, just as in the other imitative arts one imitation is always of one thing, so in poetry the story, as an imitation of action, must represent one action, a complete whole, with its several incidents so closely connected that the transposal or withdrawal of any one of them will disjoin and dislocate the whole. For that which makes no perceptible difference by its presence or absence is no real part of the whole.