Sam Esmail Quotes

As always, we start off with asking, 'What's a good episode?' We don't think about timing, and we don't think about logistics. We just think about what would be good.

I've always found the script to be more of a skeleton, the template.

This is absolutely the true answer, no word of a lie, 100% guaranteed: Q: What's the best way to turn my idea into a story? A: Whatever works for you.

One of the biggest mistakes people make is to think that what you need to write a novel is imagination, creativity and a facility with words. Yes, you need all those things, but a novel is a highly complex organism that needs to be dealt with in quite a logical manner.

I have the 'thing' worked out - the trick or the surprise or the pivotal fact. Then I just start somewhere and let the story work itself out.

Obviously, I love to do both contemporary and historical fiction. When a hint of a story grabs me, I try to go with it to see where it will take me whatever the setting.

There are many ways to go about a story. And if you give yourself some formal constraints, it just makes the job so much - maybe 'easier' isn't the right word, but because you know your boundaries, you can just play within those boundaries much more, so it's much more fun to do.

You just write about things that happen.

As a novelist, you could say that I am dreaming while I am awake, and every day I can continue with yesterday's dream. Because it is a dream, there are so many contradictions and I have to adjust them to make the story work. But, in principle, the original dream does not change.

I think it's a short story writer's duty, as well as writing well about emotions and characters, to write story.

Good scripts and interesting stories are hard enough to find.

I would, however, start writing fiction about 10 years before I actually did, because it's such great fun to do, many times more creative than nonfiction.

When you're writing a novel - at least the way I write is I work from what I would call 'emotional atmosphere,' ambiance to ambiance.

I get the beginning. I get the end. Then I write the middle. That's how I do it.

Writing fiction, I really just sit there and it just comes.

There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.

If the script is telling the story well, that is your inspiration, and you do not need to go somewhere else.

My job is to help my father tell stories.

Where I have come unstuck sometimes has mostly been to do with the stories not being quite right or not connecting with a contemporary audience.

I had never written anything. And I had never studied writing. So my motives were pure: I had a great story... a courtroom drama that I sort of fictionalized, and that became 'A Time to Kill.'

For each book, there's a back story of where the idea came from. Sometimes it's derived from a current event or topic of discussion, such as 'Deadline.'

For someone who wants to write a story, they should go on thinking about the story. When it comes up to a level, where it has reached your neck that's when you should go about writing it.

You spend so much time as a writer telling straight and linear stories.

I think a script is great when it starts with the structure and works with the structure without falling into the typical three-act system in which the audience is ahead of the movie. I hate that, but that is like 99% of what I read.

When I am writing fiction, I believe I am much better organized, more methodical - one has to be when writing a novel. Writing poetry is a state of free float.