From The Paris Review’s interview with Kurt Vonnegut:
VONNEGUT
When you exclude plot, when you exclude anyone’s wanting anything, you exclude the reader, which is a mean-spirited thing to do. You can also exclude the reader by not telling him immediately where the story is taking place, and who the people are—
INTERVIEWER
And what they want.
VONNEGUT
Yes. And you can put him to sleep by never having characters confront each other. Students like to say that they stage no confrontations because people avoid confrontations in modern life. “Modern life is so lonely,” they say. This is laziness. It’s the writer’s job to stage confrontations, so the characters will say surprising and revealing things, and educate and entertain us all. If a writer can’t or won’t do that, he should withdraw from the trade.
See also:
- Story, by Robert McKee
- Adaptation: The Shooting Script, by Charlie Kauffman
- Adaptation, directed by Spike Jonze