Raphael Bob-Waksberg Quotes

Narrative and characters have always interested me. I never tried to alienate an audience. Of course, gradually, I wanted a bigger and bigger space to draw people in, so it's very organic [growth].

You do understand that you can't force the situation, but in terms of how you edit, you can define that to take the audience along, whether it be a storyline or a character moment that we can play out. The more experience you've had, the more beneficial it is, period.

Of course, I'm being rude. I'm spoiling the ending, not only of the entire book, but of this particular piece of it. I have given you two events in advance, because I don't have much interest in building mystery. Mystery bores me. It chores me. I know what happens and so do you. It's the machinations that wheel us there that aggravate, perplex, interest, and astound me. There are many things to think of. There is much story.

With any television series - and it's something that is taken for granted with movies because you have the whole arc within two hours - you establish who the character is and it's a two-dimensional version, or if you're lucky, a two and a half-dimensional character. Once you establish that, you can move forward and break all the rules. Once the audience has accepted who the person is, then you can do the exact opposite. What makes it funny and interesting is doing the opposite.

As a filmmaker, you are going to manipulate the character as you need to make the scenes work.

I always begin with a character or characters, and then try to think up as much action for them as possible.

I think the show [Grimm] became a little more procedural following the pilot, and I didn't know that would happen. Recently more of the mythology has crept in, and the characters are starting to bloom.

I think it's good to leave people with the memory of that being a great character. And if we have a reason to bring him back, we'll bring him back.

What I had found after the success of Karate Kid II is that an actor basically needs to - a primary requirement on my part as how I view as actor is you have to create a background, you have to create a history of that character and place her into the script that you're reading and carry on forward because you don't know how the future unfolds. This is what storytelling is you place a certain set of circumstances with a certain set of characters and you see what unfolds after an event happens.

Because I come from the theater, I use the images of the theater and of movies a great deal when I write. I see the story in my head. I have to break down the outline of a story first. I have to know where I'm going. Usually I have a good beginning and a good ending, and then I think, "Now I have to find my way through it."

I don't try to intellectualize characters too much. But I always think of the audience. I always make sure that my characters are likeable.

You have to think about good storytelling and characters first. Then hopefully, the rest of that stuff will follow, some more than others. But if you don't have a good film and strong characters, then you don't have anything down the road.

I think the thing that made this stand out the most was just the fact that there's a lot more character to these characters. We see their back stories and we see their present situations, and that was a lot more interesting than just the regular procedural with four heads standing around a body, spelling it out for you. It's a lot more of a roller coaster ride.

I think we dip in and out of it. Every new show is trying to find their feet before they can say what they are. That's certainly something that I like about the role - going in and out of the personal life. There are some episodes where we go into it a little more, and some where we don't at all

I don't think you can teach someone how to come up with good characters or a story.

Rule of storytelling: When a character is shoved against a wall, shove them against a wall harder.

I like the discipline of writing a script. You can't go into the character's head - you have to find these creative ways to help externalize what they're thinking.

I would never wish to say that I've finally waved goodbye to any character, it's just that the emphasis tends to shift.

Character, I think, is the single most important thing in fiction. You might read a book once for its interesting plot—but not twice.

I love sentences. I love characters. But most of all, perhaps, I love to work on plot, and that may be where my natural gifts lie, if I have any. I like to think hard about plots in TV shows and films.

I think the good stories are those where the character decides to break away and do something different.

I've done a number of films. I've been around this. I think the biggest challenge is just getting the script right, the way that you want the script to be. It's really about capturing the complexity of emotions and creating the kind of characters that people will want to watch every week.

Well, it's kind of like that classic sort of trajectory in this kind of movie where there's conflict and they're estranged and they kind of grow to love each other but they don't show it. Then at the end - it's kind of like that. But I think the characters are more interesting than that.

We see films all the time, whether they have access to all kinds of intellectual property or artifacts, and the one thing that they don't get is story. So I think whether you're talking about a biopic or an action film or a science-fiction film that has all the CGI in the world, if you're not trying to connect with an audience, it doesn't really matter.

Ultimately, if the character is interesting and you said that before: It doesn't matter if it's likable. That's really what it is. If they interest you. If the context in which the characters are set interests you then I think then you're pulled in by it.