Once a novel gets going and I know it is viable, I don't then worry about plot or themes. These things will come in almost automatically because the characters are now pulling the story.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes that once the characters are developed, the plot and themes naturally unfold through their actions and interactions.
Chinua Achebe suggests that the essence of storytelling lies not in meticulously planning the plot or themes in advance but in crafting compelling characters that drive the narrative. When characters are fully realized, they inherently influence the direction of the story, allowing plot and themes to emerge organically as the narrative progresses.
In practice
This quote can be shared in a creative writing workshop to inspire budding authors.
In fact, I thought that Christianity was very a good and a very valuable thing for us. But after a while, I began to feel that the story that I was told about this religion wasn't perhaps completely whole, that something was left out.
Writers don't give prescriptions. They give headaches!
Mr. Brown had thought of nothing but numbers. He should have known that the kingdom of God did not depend on large crowds. Our Lord Himself stressed the importance of fewness. Narrow is the way and few the number. To fill the Lord's holy temple with an idolatrous crowd clamoring for signs was a folly of everlasting consequence. Our Lord used the whip only once in His life - to drive the crowd away from His church.
It is the storyteller who makes us what we are, who creates history. The storyteller creates the memory that the survivors must have - otherwise their surviving would have no meaning.
Writing has always been a serious business for me. I felt it was a moral obligation. A major concern of the time was the absence of the African voice. Being part of that dialogue meant not only sitting at the table but effectively telling the African story from an African perspective - in full earshot of the world.
An angry man is always a stupid man.
The writer, when he is also an artist, is someone who admits what others don't dare reveal.
I don't want to express alienation. It isn't what I feel. I'm interested in various kinds of passionate engagement. All my work says be serious, be passionate, wake up.
At some point during the filmmaking process, you lose objectivity, and you need the eyes of someone who understands the process and has been in the trenches.
Poetry is a mixture of common sense, which not all have, with an uncommon sense, which very few have.
I wanted to write the kind of poetry that people read and remembered, that they lived by - the kinds of lines that I carried with me from moment to moment on a given day without even having chosen to.
Being a kid with black skin in South Central Los Angeles, in a part of the world where opportunity didn't necessarily knock every day, is what gave me this sensibility and drove me to explore my fascination with art.
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