Rewriting isn't just about dialogue; it's the order of the scenes, how you finish a scene, how you get into a scene.
Interpretation
Rewriting is essential in creating a cohesive and impactful narrative in storytelling.
This quote by Tom Stoppard emphasizes the importance of rewriting in the creative process, particularly in writing. It suggests that rewriting goes beyond just refining dialogue; it encompasses the overall structure, pacing, and transitions of scenes, which are crucial for effective storytelling. Stoppard highlights that careful consideration of how scenes are organized and presented can greatly enhance the narrative and its emotional impact on the audience.
In practice
In a writing workshop, I shared Stoppard's quote to emphasize the necessity of revisiting our drafts.
Love is - OK, it's 20 things, but it isn't 19. And I think that love reaches for something which is very, very deep in us and is very easily obscured, and is also very easily denied, which is the instinct towards the other person, other than toward the self.
A movie camera is like having someone you have a crush on watching you from afar - you pretend it's not there.
I once did a radio program with a famous materialist, that is to say a scientist who believed that absolutely everything was physical and that all emotions were reductive to little electrical impulses in your neurons. And I found that I didn't believe that. But what the emotions really are, I don't have an alternative theory.
One of the reasons why there are so many versions of Chekhov is that translations date in a way that the original doesn't; translations seem to be of their time.
A Chinaman of the T'ang Dynasty—and, by which definition, a philosopher—dreamed he was a butterfly, and from that moment he was never quite sure that he was not a butterfly dreaming it was a Chinese philosopher. Envy him; in his two-fold security.
Chekhov directors and Chekhov actors love working on his plays because there seems to be no end to what you can find out about the micro-narrative when you're investigating a text.
A day in which I don't write leaves a taste of ashes.
Through care taken over trends, the desire to be novel and affectation knowledge, we repudiate our art, our instinct, our own way of doing things; it is absurd and stupid
Pianists call me a composer, composers call me a pianist. The classicists think me a futurist, and the futurists call me a reactionary.
Prince or commoner, tenor or bass, Painter or plumber or never-do-well, Do me a favor and shut your face - Poets alone should kiss and tell.
There is in writing the constant joy of sudden discovery, of happy accident.
I'll never get bored of seeing flawed women on the screen.
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