Mara Brock Akil Quotes

I think that I'm going to write a bigger thing, and then I end up writing about people, and the bigger thing recedes into the background, and hope that it's still there.

It always comes down to script and characters.

Whenever I write for television, I plan the story on whiteboard wallpaper in my office, using a system created by the American writer Dan Harmon. It's remarkably simple: a character wants something; they enter a new world and adapt to it; they get what they want, re-enter the old world and change.

Sometimes, I have themes that interest me or that touch on larger issues but, really, I'm just trying to figure out the plot, or how the characters work. I'm trying to make the best story I possibly can.

Writing a TV show is totally different than writing features, or just, what I started doing is writing features. You write a little bit more organically. You start from the beginning to the end, beginning, middle and end.

When I wrote for TV, I was always thinking in terms of character and story. After fifteen years, it became hard-wired in me.

We start with strong characters and build the movie from there. That not to say we don't struggle with story - that's the most challenging part.

The few times I've tried to write original screenplays, it's a difficult process because I just don't feel like I know the characters the way I know them after the year or two it takes to write a novel.

When writing, I'm not thinking about war, even if I'm writing about it. I'm thinking about sentences, rhythm and story. So the focus, when I'm working, even if it's on a story that takes place at war, is not on bombs or bullets. It's on the story.

A story is built on characters and reasons.

I'm just a sucker for a good script.

One of the ready advantages of writing a road or quest story is that it mirrors the experience of writing a novel.

When I work, I think mainly in terms of dramatic choices.

Screenwriting is about condensing.

Half of a broadcast show, in my experience, is things happening, and the other half is people talking about how they feel about the things that happened. And so there's this sense of everyone saying their subtext out loud.

My only conclusion about structure is that nothing works if you don't have interesting characters and a good story to tell.

You don't put your personal viewpoints in a good movie. A movie should only be concerned with characters, not some big moral, although it's always underneath.

I am on the lookout for smart scripts and stories where my role has weightage.

I write as if I'm someone reading the book - often people ask if I write one strand first and then go back and seed in the other, but I don't think I could keep track of who knows what, and the tension would come out wrong, so the answer is no - I write it more or less in the order you read it.

I think screenplay is hard. I've tried that, and it felt really difficult; like, all the stuff I think I'm good at, like description and internal experience and memory, you can't do that - or, at least, I couldn't figure out a way.

The writing is only ever the attractive thing about a part. And also if all the elements within the writing come together - the character and the structure and the narrative - if they are all there then you become excited.

You don't idea your way into a plot but plot your way into an idea.

What interests me in writing a novel is taking really remote voices, characters, and stories and beginning to create some kind of web.

A good script makes our job a lot easier.

Writing a screenplay, for me, is like juggling. It's like, how many balls can you get in the air at once? All those ideas have to float out there to a certain point, and then they'll crystallize into a pattern.