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When I decided to take writing seriously, I did a lot of reading and analyzing of the books I liked, and came up with what I thought were pretty sound plotting and structure basics.

A lot of my early career, I wrote story songs that had narratives, that had plots.

The point of what I do is that it doesn't really matter what a book or a story is as long it moves you, informs you, challenges you, entertains you, or changes you.

Novels are one of the few remaining areas of narrative storytelling where one person does almost all of the creative heavy lifting.

I try and make little stories. Whether it's with a pencil or with bits of records, it's really the same thing.

My books are primarily plot driven but the best plot in the world is useless if you don't populate them with characters that readers can care about.

I've always figured the only way I could finish a book and get a plot was just to keep making it longer and longer until something happens - you know, until it finds its own plot - because you can't outline and then fit the thing into it. I suppose it's a slow way of working.

Once I started writing novels, I understood how hard it was to write really good short stories.

I don't think I'm a natural novelist. Plot is definitely one of my weaker points. I've been working on it a long time, and it's not getting much better.

I'm not setting out to adapt books and work with books, but when really amazing stories come to you in that form, it's really hard to turn away from that.