An awful lot of storytelling isn't really about making people understand - it's about making people care.
Interpretation
Storytelling aims to evoke emotion rather than simply convey information.
This quote by Steven Moffat emphasizes the essential role of emotional engagement in storytelling. While clarity and comprehension are important aspects of any narrative, the true power of a story lies in its ability to resonate with the audience on a deeper level, stirring feelings that prompt empathy and connection rather than just intellectual understanding.
In practice
In a writing workshop, to explain the importance of emotional connection, you might use this quote.
Demons run when a good man goes to war. Night will fall and drown the sun when a good man goes to war. Friendship dies and true love lies. Night will fall and the dark will rise when a good man goes to war. Demons run but count the cost; the battle's won but the child is lost.
It's a funny thing about stories. It doesn't feel like you make them up, more like you find them. You type and type and you know you haven't got it yet, because somewhere out there, there's that perfect thing -- the unexpected ending that was always going to happen. That place you've always been heading for, but never expected to go.
I don't want to think that the stories are finite; I want to feel that they can go on forever.
I'll be a story in your head. But that's OK. We're all stories, in the end. Just make it a good one, eh? Because it was, you know; it was the best.
The trouble with a series as it gets older is it can feel like a tradition, and tradition is the enemy of suspense, and it's the enemy of comedy. It's the enemy of everything, really. So you have to shake it up.
I know this is going to sound very self-serving, and I apologize for it, but if you can write comedy, you can pretty much write anything, because it's the hardest. It's the most technically demanding, the most precisely evaluated form of writing. People know if it works or not. There's a big button marked 'fail,' and that's when nobody laughs.
Stand-up is the only thing in which you actually write it, act it and direct it simultaneously, so it's actually a great theater exercise.
I have learned as much about writing about my people by listening to blues and jazz and spirituals as I have by reading novels.
The sun had gone down behind the tall apartments of the movie stars in the West Fifties, and the unclear voices of children, already gathered like crikets on the grass, rose through the hot twilight.
I can write a poem in 10 minutes. I like writing songs; I can write songs in 5 or 10 minutes. My concentration seems very short.
We don't need a lot of initiatives for women in film; what we need is money.
In documentary filmmaking, there's a tradition of telling stories about victims. We often do that from a very patronizing place, but mostly we do it from a very selfish place, to reassure ourselves that our lives are in sympathy and solidarity with the victims.
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