Dave Morris

“As we get older, we demand stories that go somewhere. Things must change.”

“Literary fiction - if we must use the term - is not the plotless, meandering indulgence that its detractors would have you believe.”

“Motion comics are just cheap animation. Very cheap animation. And I like animation almost as much as I like comics, but I'm not rushing to pay out for a cheap hybrid of the two.”

“Publishers were ever eager for authors to do their own publicity because nobody else was willing to do it for nothing. But then it became clear that if you want somebody to champion the story, there's nobody better than the person who made it all up.”

“When I mention that I'm a game designer as well as a writer, someone will nod and say, 'Ah, that's what we like about your script. The videogame feel.'”

“If your agent or publisher is jumping up and down at the thought of your novel, it's because they're picturing the movie poster on the side of the bus.”

“Standing out as a writer today requires more than a bright idea and limpid prose. Authors need to become businesspeople as well.”

“Six years old, and I already knew that my natural home was the world inside the head.”

“Interactive storytelling emphasizes a personal connection with the characters. It is a powerful tool that can draw you so deeply into the world of a story that you lose sight of it as a story. You think you are there - at least, if it is done right.”

“You don't get 'The Unfinished Swan' or 'Shadow of the Colossus' or even Telltale's 'Walking Dead' until you've sat through the long, linear infodumps of something like 'Metal Gear Solid'.”

“Readers prefer a world they can relate to.”

“A well-written novel, the most immersive of all forms of storytelling, should command your full attention and belief.”

“'Frankenstein' is a work rich in possible meanings, so the horror-show interpretation is as valid as any.”

“When you're a writer, everything that interests you feeds into your work.”

“People nowadays think of gamebooks as rather old hat - and, after all, it was twenty years ago. In their heyday, though, they were a phenomenon, selling upwards of a hundred thousand units per title. And it's not as old hat as you might think: the same design skills I used in those days apply equally when I'm creating modern videogames.”

“A new medium always has a period when it is struggling inside the confining box of an earlier medium. Creators have to unlearn what they knew before they can see the fresh, uncharted vistas stretching before them.”

“'Breaking Bad' and 'The Shield' were planned right from the start so that their narrative trajectory would come down in a blaze of fireworks.”

“My first memory of the public library is of lugging home a volume of Norse myths as heavy as a thunder-god's hammer.”

“There is a great insatiable hunger for good stories throughout the media.”

“In good writing, the contemplative and the exciting happen at the same time.”