Charles Reade Quotes

When you go into the theatre and the lights dim, you want to entertain people from beginning to end. You want them to be swept up in your story, on the edge of their seats, unable to wait to see what happens next, be blown away and afterwards just go, 'Wow!'

If you want something from an audience, you give blood to their fantasies. It's the ultimate hustle.

Theatre should be a taxing experience: the greatest achievement of a writer is to produce a character who creates anxiety.

At the premieres, I always watch the audience. If a child asks to go to the bathroom, I know I've failed.

I made mistakes in drama. I thought drama was when actors cried. But drama is when the audience cries.

A film with an untidy plot cannot grip the audience and define their emotional response.

That's what fiction writers do: create characters and do terrible things to them for the entertainment of others. If they feel guilty enough, they write happy endings.

On stage, we just want to generate hysteria. We don't care about looking cool or posing.

We want to create these dramatic situations, whether they are real or not, to entertain audiences.

Comedy is harder, because if there's no laughs, it's pretty bad. But drama, if there's no reaction, you can say, 'Well, it's not their cup of tea. Maybe it's too heavy for the audience.'

It's very difficult to get an audience to be terrified of what's going on. Think about it: You're in a room with so many other people, so for them to be terrified and to care about what's going on on-screen takes a lot of work.

The more extreme the story, the more successful it becomes. Emotions on high, empathy engaged, we become primed to help.

People love storylines. They love them because at some point, the talent will get people emotionally invested.

Sometimes you have to set the angle within the match, but you gotta give a reason for one guy to be loved and one guy to be hated.

Every play is rhythmic control. If you want an audience to go on a journey, it's rhythmic control. You're crafting when they lean in, when they push back, when they breathe, when they surrender.

After all, no one is ever taken in by the happy ending, but we are often divinely fuddled by the tragic curtain.

I've made movies on every part of the spectrum, and you do understand when you go into certain movies that you're trying to elicit a certain kind of response from the audience, and people get a real sense of satisfaction when they're rooting for a character and the character pulls it off.

If you kill a character people feel sad. That's too easy.

Last, but not least -- in fact, this is most important -- you need a happy ending. However, if you can create tragic situations and jerk a few tears before the happy ending, it will work much better.

I don't know what makes a good feature story. I've always assumed that if it was a story that interested or amused me, that it would have the same impact on other people.

Every movement of the theater by a skilful poet is communicated, as it were, by magic, to the spectators; who weep, tremble, resent, rejoice, and are inflamed with all the variety of passions which actuate the several personages of the drama.

From a tale one expects a bit of wildness, of exaggeration and dramatic effect. The tale has no inherent concern with decorum, balance or harmony. ... A tale may not display a great deal of structural, psychological, or narrative sophistication, though it might possess all three, but it seldom takes its eye off its primary goal, the creation of a particular emotional state in its reader. Depending on the tale, that state could be wonder, amazement, shock, terror, anger, anxiety, melancholia, or the momentary frisson of horror.

The audience requires not information but drama.

You don’t know what’s going to happen in the end, and that’s what the best plays are.

The public is composed of numerous groups whose cry to us writers is: 'Comfort me.' 'Amuse me.' 'Touch my sympathies.' 'Make me sad.' 'Make me dream.' 'Make me laugh.' 'Make me shiver.' 'Make me weep.' 'Make me think.'