"As I said, I'm interested in character stories more than explications of imaginary societies (Reflection was halfway an exception), so I don't usually choose a viewpoint character with the best expository position, and I try hard to maintain control of viewpoint."

Rating:

  rate this quote
Topic: none  help us select a topic for this quote

More quotes from: John M. Ford

• "A game scenario is different from a story in that it needs to be, to ..."
• "A scenario isn't a story that the gamemaster reads to the players, it's an outline ..."
• "A simple genre-fiction validation is the hero's winning the high-noon gunfight and being embraced by ..."
• "Again, the elements of story - plot, character, conflict - are common, but the format ..."
• "Albin Ronay is well-informed and highly placed, but he's not omniscient; he may even know ..."
• "And, in the way of much farce (Feydeau in particular), many of the characters create ..."
• "At one point I intended to write precursor and sequel novels, about the establishment of ..."
• "But my perception is of a great plurality of laughter out there, and that was ..."
• "Contemporary speech is as loaded with reference and allusion as any other, possibly more so; ..."
• "Creating the fictional background for a game world isn't significantly different from creating a background ..."
• "I don't think anyone wants a reader to be completely lost - certainly not to ..."
• "I like live interaction, am not much interested in RPing with strangers, and my taste ..."
• "I want to come at it from the characters' angle, and trust the reader to ..."
• "I'm very happy that the New York Times has spoken well of my stuff; who ..."
• "If all anthropologists were military personnel whose only contact with the groups they studied was ..."
• "If I were to write Web now, it would be a much, much darker book. "
• "In mystery stories in particular, the reader is often trying to guess Who Did It?, ..."
• "It does, however, require characters who can see that complete picture and explain it. I ..."
• "It's a sociopolitical story - the society and politics are vaguely Georgian, though the technology ..."
• "Mary Renault's characters don't speak in hexameter; they speak in a demotic English that gives ..."
• "Naturally, the reader has access only to the events I show and the way I ..."

• "Now, if Planet had been overwhelmingly unpopular - if only a handful of the readers ..."
• "On the other hand, we tended to present this in terms of Talented Lone Protagonists, ..."
• "One reason is that societies don't generally have large signs explaining how they work for ..."
• "People tell me they laughed hard enough to wake their spouses, that they've given away ..."
• "Sometimes one character can plausibly explain things to another - the Stranger in Town, or ..."
• "Sometimes the reader will decide something else than the author's intent; this is certainly true ..."
• "The cynical part of the answer is that I expect to see a good deal ..."
• "The epigraphs were really just an in-joke - an affectation, if you prefer - though ..."
• "The ideal, it seems to me, is to show things happening and allow the reader ..."
• "The language fictional characters use is chosen for effect, at least if the author is ..."
• "The Lensman series mainly follows Kimball Kinnison and his companions, but Smith built a huge ..."
• "The people who don't like it tend to dislike it intensely. That's unfortunate, but not ..."
• "The usual disclaimer: SF is not about the actual consequences of technological change, because we ..."
• "There are people who believe in an absolutely transparent prose; with every respect for clarity ..."
• "There are readers who want every point to be clearly and unambiguously set forth, and ..."
• "There may only be one story told in the novel-world, as distinct from the many ..."
• "There's a comment of Michael Moorcock's about protagonists who are defined, not by what they ..."
• "We're not lost. We're locationally challenged. "
• "Well, it's an adventure story, and a Bildungsroman, of course, but there was also the ..."