9 Orson Scott Card Quotes on Storytelling

Orson Scott Card quotes on storytelling

8. A strange thing happened then. The speaker agreed with her that she had made a mistake that night, and she knew when he said the words that it was true, that his judgment was correct. And yet she felt strangely healed, as if simply speaking her mistake were enough to purge some of the pain of it. For the first time, then, she caught a glimpse of what the power of speaking might be. It wasn't a matter of confession, penance, and absolution, like the priests offered. It was something else entirely. Telling the story of who she was, and then realizing that she was no longer the same person. That she had made a mistake, and the mistake had changed her, and now she would not make the mistake again because she had become someone else, someone less afraid, someone more compassionate.

9. But I hope that in the lives of [the characters], you will find stories worth holding in your memory, perhaps even in your heart. That's the transaction that counts more than best-seller lists, royalty statements, awards, or reviews. Because in the pages of this book, you and I will meet one-on-one, my mind and yours, and you will enter a world of my making and dwell there, not as a character that I control, but as a person with a mind of your own. You will make of my story what you need it to be, if you can. I hope my tale is true enough and flexible enough that you can make it into a world worth living in.

11. This is the essence of the transaction between storyteller and audience. The 'true' story is not the one that exists in my mind; it is certainly not the written words on the bound paper that you hold in your hands. The story in my mind is nothing but a hope; the text of the story is the tool I created in order to try to make that hope a reality. The story itself, the true story, is the one that the audience members create in their minds, guided and shaped by my text, but then transformed, elucidated, expanded, edited, and clarified by their own experience, their own desires, their own hopes and fears.

125. He wasn't telling the truth, with trumpets; he was telling the truth, the story you wouldn't think to doubt because it's taken for granted.

346. This is love. This is the kind of love that songs and stories are made of.

543. Before the story he refused to even think about it; after the story, it became conceivable to him, and, once he could conceive of it, it soon became inevitable

633. The kind of man that's the one kind worth loving, when I tell him that story, he'll never be able to love me

1101. Tell the story plainly and clearly.

1103. If it isn't a wonderful story first, who cares how 'important' it is? (Ibid.)