Plot is people. Human emotions and desires founded on the realities of life, working at cross purposes, getting hotter and fiercer as they strike against each other until finally there's an explosion-that's Plot.
Interpretation
The essence of storytelling lies in the interactions of human emotions and desires.
Leigh Brackett emphasizes that the core of a plot is not just events but the complex emotions and conflicting desires of characters that drive the narrative. These elements create tension and conflict, ultimately leading to a climax or resolution, akin to an explosion that brings the story to its peak.
In practice
This quote can be used in a lecture about narrative structure in storytelling.
Making a movie where the central character is a horse was a challenge. Because I'm scared of riding. I was thrown as a kid. One of my daughters is a competitive jumper, we live with horses, we have stables on our property. But I don't ride. I observe, and I worry.
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.
I don't think in art there is ever a precedent; each moment is a new one and terrifying and threatening and bursting with hope.
All my adult life I have been searching for the right adjective to describe my father's peculiarly aggressive comic style. I recently settled on 'defamatory.'
One of the things that happens in novels it's almost like a continual debate with yourself. That's why you're writing the book. It's why you create characters: so you can argue with yourself.
The origins of poetry are clearly rooted in obscurity, in secretiveness, in incantation, in spells that must at once invoke and protect, tell the secret and keep it.
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