Matt Bomer Quotes

I usually start with an ending, then outline high points of things that happen, and kind of make up the rest as I go along. Occasionally, the characters surprise me, and I wonder how we got here. Other times, the characters are stubborn and won't do something I want them to in the story.

I'm really quite bad at coming up with plot ideas. I like to create characters and just see what will happen to them when I let them loose!

A lot of directors want to storyboard you, whereas the best way to get a performance out of an actor is a collaborative process where you listen to the actor's input.

I don't really decide what the core of the story is before I write. I write to figure out what the story is. And I think the characters end up talking to you and telling you what they want to be doing and what is important to them. So in some ways, your job is to listen as much as it is to write.

With most good scripts and good shows, they expect the actor to bring some of their ideas to the backstory of the character. It's always a good collaboration between the actor and the writer and the director to try stuff out during the process.

We try to find the information, the clues, to unlock the play or the story or our characters, especially when they're based on real people that live and breathe.

I don't plot with huge detail, just big moments and important elements, and then I have a structure but can fly by the seat of my pants when I write.

I realized later how much my acting experience influenced my writing and how it helped me to write for other actors.

As an actor, you create a character from your understanding of what you have heard and your observations. Eventually, every film is an extension of the images that I have seen or what I have heard or read somewhere.

I'm consistently blown away by 'Mad Men.' Having spent so much time in the writers' room, I'm cursed in that anytime I watch something, I'm always calculating what the writers are up to.

I'm big on story structure. I studied with John Truby, who mapped out story by means of moral wants and needs, and that's what I do. Hey, so does John Irving.

There are two questions that you ask yourself as a writer, and one of them is, 'But why?' The question that takes the book forward is, 'What if? What if x y or z happened? How would those characters react?'

I try to research or make up for myself what happened in any character's life. From when he was born until the first page of the script. I fill in the blanks.

No, you don't have to start your play with a premise. You can start with a character or an incident, or even a simple thought. This thought or incident grows, and the story slowly unfolds itself. You have time to find your premise in the mass of your material later. The important thing is to find it.

What I have in advance are people I want to write about and a problem or problems that I see those people encountering and that I want to explore - it all proceeds sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph, and scene by scene.

With any actor, if you know your character well enough, you'll know pretty much what he would say under any circumstance, or whatever situation might rear its head.

It took me many years to figure out how to structure a compelling story.

To try to create a character without a whole lot of information can be taxing. At the same time, it's fun to just stay on your toes and let the next bit of dialogue come in, and turn the page as you read the next script and see what they have in store for you next.

Some film actors want to sit back and look at every scene and all that crap. No, you're an actor - tell the story, and when it's told, there's another one to tell.

For me the rehearsal period is the part I most enjoy. It's the creating of the story.

I don't personally look to my own life experiences for answers about how to play a scene.

I think in some ways, acting and writing are the same. You're getting inside the skin of someone else; you're creating their language and their actions. As a writer, you have to see the whole picture and the structure, and you have to understand every character.

My forte is the plotting. You sit down, and you work out a plot.

I don't start with a list of historical scenes that I want to include in the book. At a certain point, the narrative totally takes over, and everything that I include I can only incorporate if it answers to the internal terms of the novel.

The first thing I look at with a project isn't who's directing, whether it's a big film; it's the character and whether I want to tell her story.