Rian Johnson Quotes

I always work from an outline.

I like to have a title before I start writing.

By the time I sit down ready to write, I've done a lot of longhand and a lot of note collecting along the way.

I always know what I'm going to write before I sit down.

The more work you put in on your outline and getting the skeleton of your story right, the easier the process is later.

I spend a lot of time outlining before I write the first word.

Once you play with these scenes and you're outlining it, again and again, and telling each other the narrative, and telling it to people you know, trying to make sure that the mathematics of the story work, you feel that those are in place, and the actual writing and final draft doesn't take as long.

Usually, I have a lot of acquaintance with the story before I start writing it. When I didn't have regular time to give to writing, stories would just be working in my head for so long that when I started to write I was deep into them. Now, I do that work by filling notebooks.

I craft everything in the beginning. I know where the characters are going before I start writing the book.

I don't start writing a script until I can see it all in my head, then it's a matter of getting it down in white heat.

I'm a big fan of outlining. Here's the theory: If I outline, then I can see the mistakes I'm liable to make. They come out more clearly in the outline than they do in the pages.

The last thing one discovers in composing a work is what to put first.

I always craft my words to the point where I think and hope they're perfect before I ever begin sketching.

When I write a book, I write very cleanly from page one to the last page. I hardly ever write out of sequence.

Actors need bricks to play with, and in fact we rejected all the improvised fragments we had made without a plan. Improvisation without a plan is like tennis without tennis balls.

I have a very long pre-writing process where I'm jotting down ideas in a notebook and ripping out relevant newspaper articles - a long fact-finding mission.

Well, I get my subject on Wednesday night; I think it out carefully on Thursday, and make my rough sketch; on Friday morning I begin, and stick to it all day, with my nose well down on the block.

I used to be an obsessive outliner - figuring that writing without an outline was like jumping off a cliff and building a parachute on the way down.

I like to write from scratch most of the time, but I like to have a backup plan just in case.

Spend more time working before you write page one. Then, the story - at least parts of it - will feel as though it is writing itself.

I do a lot of mental work before I ever start writing.

When I'm writing a script, before I can write dialogue or anything, I have two or three hundred pages of notes, which takes me a year. So, it's not like "what happens next." I've got things that I'm thinking about but I don't settle on them. And if I try to write dialogue before then, I can't. It's just garbage.

Well, first you have to love writing. A lot of authors love having written. But I enjoy the actual writing. Beside that, I think the main reason I can be so prolific is the huge amount of planning I do before I start to write. I do a very complete, chapter-by-chapter outline of every book I write. When I sit down to write, I already know everything that's going to happen in the book. This means I've done all the important thinking, and I can relax and enjoy the writing. I could never write so many books if I didn't outline them first.

I know exactly what I want to write. I do not write until I do. Usually I write it all down only once. And that goes relatively quickly, since it really depends only on how fast I type.

If you do improvising, it can sometimes end up being a waste of time. And if you do that, it's more or less based on a writing process.