"I don't need all that much - I just need to know who my characters are and what kind of jam they're going to get into, and I'll write myself out of their jam"
About this Quote
Price is selling a kind of writerly swagger that’s really a working-class ethic: show up with the basics, then earn the ending. The line rejects the fetish for blueprints and lore-bibles in favor of pressure, personality, and consequence. He doesn’t “build worlds” so much as he drops people into a tight corner and watches what their habits, fears, and improvisations make inevitable. That’s very Richard Price: the street-level realism, the moral claustrophobia, the sense that plot is what happens when character runs out of room.
The key move is the word “jam.” It’s casual, almost comic, which downplays the seriousness of what he often writes about - violence, desperation, compromised institutions. Calling it a jam frames drama as a practical problem, not a metaphysical quest. It also implies solvability, but only through craft: “I’ll write myself out” admits the writer is trapped too. The story isn’t a prepackaged lesson delivered from on high; it’s a negotiation with the mess he’s created.
Subtextually, he’s staking a claim against both pretension and paralysis. If you know “who” someone is, you can generate plot without forcing it, because the way out of trouble is already encoded in their contradictions. Context matters here: Price comes out of a New York tradition of dialogue-driven fiction and later TV writers’ rooms, where character clarity is currency and outlines can’t substitute for lived detail. The quote reads like a manifesto for narrative trust: trust the people you’ve made, then let the jam do its work.
The key move is the word “jam.” It’s casual, almost comic, which downplays the seriousness of what he often writes about - violence, desperation, compromised institutions. Calling it a jam frames drama as a practical problem, not a metaphysical quest. It also implies solvability, but only through craft: “I’ll write myself out” admits the writer is trapped too. The story isn’t a prepackaged lesson delivered from on high; it’s a negotiation with the mess he’s created.
Subtextually, he’s staking a claim against both pretension and paralysis. If you know “who” someone is, you can generate plot without forcing it, because the way out of trouble is already encoded in their contradictions. Context matters here: Price comes out of a New York tradition of dialogue-driven fiction and later TV writers’ rooms, where character clarity is currency and outlines can’t substitute for lived detail. The quote reads like a manifesto for narrative trust: trust the people you’ve made, then let the jam do its work.
Quote Details
| Topic | Writing |
|---|
More Quotes by Richard
Add to List
