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.
Poetry has been to me its own exceeding great reward; it has given me the habit of wishing to discover the good and beautiful in all that meets and surrounds me.
The long path from material through function to creative work has only one goal: to create order out of the desperate confusion of our time.
Imagine writing a poem with a sweating, worried-looking boy handing you a different pencil at the end of every word. My golf, you may say, is no poem; nevertheless, I keep wanting it to be one.
I continue to write essays about art. The visual is always part of my work, and it gives me immense pleasure to make up the words of art and create them verbally rather than build them.
The best graphics are about the useful and important, about life and death, about the universe. Beautiful graphics do not traffic with the trivial.
Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable.
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