When I really have to push and grope and scratch and claw to make a story work, that's a telltale sign that maybe something conceptually isn't right.
Interpretation
The struggle in storytelling can indicate deeper conceptual flaws.
David E. Kelley highlights the importance of a story's foundational concept, suggesting that if significant effort is required to make a story come together, it may be a sign that the underlying idea needs reevaluation. This reflects the belief that storytelling should flow with a certain ease when the core premise is sound and well-thought-out.
In practice
A writer referring to this quote while discussing the challenges they face in their latest project.
You've got to honor your relationship with your audience - that they sit down because they want to be entertained. And that doesn't mean you can't provoke them and antagonize them and challenge them in the course of the entertainment as long as you keep the entertainment part of the equation alive.
Dance is bigger than the physical body. When you extend your arm, it doesn't stop at the end of your fingers, because you're dancing bigger than that; you're dancing spirit.
All art is a kind of confession.
I can't live where I want to, I can't go where I want to go, I can't do what I want to, I can't even say what I want to. I decided I was a very stupid fool not to at least paint as I wanted to.
People are always asking me what my lyrics mean. Does it mean this, does it mean that, that's all anybody wants to know. F**k them, darling. I say what any decent poet would say if you dared ask him to analyze his work: If you see it, dear, then it's there. ... I think my melodies are superior to my lyrics. ... I was never too keen on the British music press. They've called us a supermarket hype, and they used to suggest that we didn't write our own songs.
To feel beauty is a better thing than to understand how we come to feel it. To have imagination and taste, to love the best, to be carried by the contemplation of nature to a vivid faith in the ideal, all this is more, a great deal more, than any science can hope to be.
Music is part of us, and either ennobles or degrades our behavior.
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