Barry Eisler Quotes

In particular, I'm drawn to the stories that have big, high concepts and real characters at their heart. And I love where those two worlds meet, and 'Edge of Tomorrow' is the perfect canvas to explore that.

In fiction, the reader will make jumps with you. If you can make the reader make that leap with you, it's a thrilling moment for everyone.

I love a big, character-rich story with a dark heart, with a compelling mystery or some kind of ticking clock at its center. I want to be lured in by prose, captured by character, and bound by stellar plotting to keep turning the pages.

We give you characters we'd feel very comfortable judging, and then go: 'Oh yeah? Watch this'.

I prefer drama; I think character-driven drama is my favorite kind of stuff to go watch, and I like being challenged by that kind of stuff in that way.

Sometimes, you don't realize that something is actually a sidetrack for the story, or it takes the tension out of a scene.

My crime novels are highly structured. I never start out with a dead body. I start with an impossible scenario. Opening questions should be mysterious, weird, intriguing, and contain the seeds of the solution. The structure has to be meticulous - I'm a structure freak.

You don't know when you are immersed in a book what the reaction to it will be, but I feel great about 'The Lake of Dreams.'

Watch out, or I'm liable to put you in a story.

I think predictability is built into any good novel in some way - you begin reading Anna Karenina and you know pretty much what's going to happen at the end. But that doesn't mean you know what's going to happen in the middle. For me, it's that sense of what happens in the middle that's important.

It's amazing how far you can get into a plot before you figure out what you're doing.

We need the villain sometimes. It makes for an interesting story.

For film and theater, you know how the story starts; you know how the story ends. With TV, you don't. It's literally like living real life in character.

When you write fiction, you have an ideal reader in your mind who's sort of you but smarter.

A novel requires a certain kind of world-building and also a certain kind of closure, ultimately. Whereas with a short story you have this sense that there are hinges that the reader doesn't see.

It was unpredictable, good storytelling that brought you back each week.

I think people enjoy a series. When you like a story, many readers want more of the same, which is dandy, if the author and the characters have more to say.

Certainly 'The Judgment of Paris' was the novel in which I found my own voice.

That's how you get surprises, because what movies are all about is surprises.

What makes a story a story is that something changes. Internal, external, small or large, trivial or of earth-shattering importance. Doesn't matter.

The suspense of a novel is not only in the reader, but in the novelist, who is intensely curious about what will happen to the hero.

I think one of the successes of Gladiator is how we manage to turn on a dime the character from one thing to another where you believe he is one thing and he is something very different.

Fiction demands structures and recognizable shapes. Big surprises only draw attention to the writer's hand.

In episodic TV you have to keep things secret to keep the viewer in suspense.

In a crime novel, if you are going to have a big revelation in chapter 30, you have to plant the information in chapters three and 11.