The most important things to remember about back story are that (a) everyone has a history and (b) most of it isn’t very interesting. Stick to the parts that are, and don’t get carried away with the rest. Long life stories are best received in bars, and only then an hour or so before closing time, and if you are buying ~ Stephen King
Where do I get my ideas? The more pertinent question is…how do I make them stop? ~ Stephen King
But here’s my little trade secret that I put into every All Is Lost moment just for added spice, and it’s something that many hit movies have. I call it the whiff of death. I started to notice how many great movies use the All Is Lost point to kill someone. Obi Wan in Star Wars is the best example — what will Luke do now?? All Is Lost is the place where mentors go to die, presumably so their students can discover “they had it in them all along.” The mentor’s death clears the way to prove that. But what if you don’t have an Obi Wan character? What if death isn’t anywhere near your story? Doesn’t matter. At the All Is Lost moment, stick in something, anything that involves a death. It works every time. Whether it’s integral to the story or just something symbolic, hint at something dead here. It could be anything. A flower in a flower pot. A goldfish. News that a beloved aunt has passed away. It’s all the same. ~ Blake Snyder
You must do it this way.” A principle says, “This works … and has through all remembered time. ~ Robert McKee
All adventure stories need antagonists to challenge the heroes. These can be natural enemies – sea storms, breaking dams, great white sharks – human enemies, or both. To add as much excitement as possible, you need to show why these opponents are so dangerous. ~ Tish Farrell
To be a screenwriter is to deal with an ongoing tug of war between breathtaking megalomania and insecurity so deep it takes years of therapy just to be able to say “I’m a writer” out loud. ~ Blake Snyder
As a writer you should not judge. You should understand. ~ Ernest Hemingway
Among the many worlds that man did not receive as a gift from nature but created out of his own mind, the world of books is the greatest… Without the word, without the writing of books, there is no history, there is no concept of humanity. And if anyone wants to try to enclose in a small space, in a single house or a single room, the history of the human spirit and to make it his own, he can only do this in the form of a collection of books. ~ Hermann Hesse
When my story stalls on me, I’ve played my hand too soon. ~ T. Jefferson Parker
One of the really bad things you can do to your writing is to dress up the vocabulary, looking for long words because you're maybe a little bit ashamed of your short ones. This is like dressing up a household pet in evening clothes. The pet is embarrassed and the person who committed this act of premeditated cuteness should be even more embarrassed. ~ Stephen King
It is perfectly okay to write garbage-as long as you edit brilliantly.” ~ C. J. Cherryh
The most important thing I’ve learned about writing is never write too much at a time… Never pump yourself dry. Leave a little for the next day. The main thing is to know when to stop. Don’t wait till you’ve written yourself out. When you’re still going good and you come to an interesting place and you know what’s going to happen next, that’s the time to stop. Then leave it alone and don’t think about it; let your subconscious mind do the work. ~ Ernest Hemingway
Deus ex machina not only erases all meaning and emotion, it's an insult to the audience. Each of us knows we must choose and act, for better or worse, to determine the meaning of our lives...Deus ex machina is an insult because it is a lie. ~ Robert McKee
The function of suspense is to put the reader in danger of an overfull bladder. ~ Sol Stein
The opposing missions of the various characters create the plot.” ~ James N. Frey
I would actually write books totally full of nothing BUT kissing scenes, but apparently people like books to have, like, “plots” or whatever.” ~ Rachel Hawkins
So often is the virgin sheet of paper more real than what one has to say, and so often one regrets having marred it. ~ Harold Acton
I try to create sympathy for my characters, then turn the monsters loose. ~ Stephen King
True character is revealed in the choices a human being makes under pressure - the greater the pressure, the deeper the revelation, the truer the choice to the character's essential nature.” 
Let's get one thing clear right now, shall we? There is no Idea Dump, no Story Central, no Island of the Buried Bestsellers; good story ideas seem to come quite literally from nowhere, sailing at you right out of the empty sky: two previously unrelated ideas come together and make something new under the sun. Your job isn't to find these ideas but to recognize them when they show up. ~ Stephen King
