Steven Soderbergh Quotes

I just always look for stuff that has a character-driven thing.

For my part, the good novel of character is the novel I can always pick up; but the good novel of incident is the novel I can never lay down.

Characters make their own plot. The dimensions of the characters determine the action of the novel.

It's easier to write about heartbreak after you've had your heart broken. You have more material to draw from, you can extrapolate from your own experiences and make reasonable assumptions about how your characters would feel and act.

I think the best stories always end up being about the people rather than the event, which is to say character-driven.

Get to know your characters as well as you can let there be something at stake, and then let the chips fall where they may.

Character development is conflict.

I'm always writing about character first. Plot, such as it is, comes from the characters.

Whenever I write, I try and approach my stories from some kind of universal theme or idea or emotion.

For each character, I try to understand what is driving them.

What drives me is character driven material.

I don't really think in terms of genre, I think in terms of story and character.

With any character, I try to focus more on who the character is and how they got to be who they are.

My love is to tell a story but I like stories that evolve from character, from the nature of the individuals involved.

I've been in a long and happy relationship for 22 years and it's never inspired me to write anything. It's too good - nothing to say. Problems, conflict, that's what makes for good stories.

In drama, the characters should determine the story. In melodrama, the story determines the characters.

The trouble is that when you read criticisms about the other films that I've made you get the impression that they're all about themes, or problems, or ideas. But those are actually things that develop out of characters, out of images and out of other things. These more abstract things develop while working on the material, and out of it. It's not a theoretical exercise from the outset.

That's been my main interest for the last 15 years, is to really make sure the story and the characters take precedence over everything else, and that I give them everything I can to make them exist as actual people.

I'm a character-driven director, and I tend to fall in love with the characters in my movies and TV shows.

I never started from ideas but always from character.

Like anything, you've gotta find the humanity in the characters.

Comedy and drama are different sides of the same coin. And the thing about comedy and drama is about likability. It's about character first. It's about story. And for me, it's about empathy, and I think the realer someone is, the further you can go either way with them.

Every story starts with an idea, but it is the characters that move this idea forward.

Every work coming from the creator is about getting the demons out, and each character in those stories had a different personal crisis to get through.

When I'm trying to imagine something, I have a few elements, a few ideas, maybe a certain actor or actress I want to create a certain type of character for, or maybe a certain place.