Bob Saget Quotes

Your job as a writer is to find storylines, narrative structures, and characters to show the things that you believe rather than saying them or telling them.

Keep everything in context, and try to have each line doing more than one thing - not just giving exposition but also revealing character and history, etc.

I often attribute my screenwriting to journalism because they drill in the who, what, when, where and why - but we really need to land on that why. That's what I've been exploring in my writing for many years and trying to get better at.

I have always argued, in a good novel, interesting things happen to interesting people.

Whether you're writing a horror show or a James Bond film, I think what bubbles beneath is interesting characterization. The colors that emerge through storytelling is what a dramatist does. There's always got to be something bubbling underneath that will erupt at some point.

'Push' had a story, 'The Paperboy' story you could just throw up in the air and shoot holes through the book because the story wasn't as strong. But I felt the characters were stronger in 'The Paperboy'; they were vivid.

I tend to write one character at a time. But I don't write the entirety of one character at a time.

I like being a storyteller. I'm bored with myself; I like to write about others. I have a lot of names in my songs: Karen, Margaret, Mary Kay. Even if it's about me, I want to put it through someone else. The music is the soundtrack to the story.

I use a lot of narration; I have a very prosaic style. I like to get you invested in the character first and do a lot of work in the first pages of each issue to try to re-establish things and keep the symbolism of a story very tucked beneath the surface.

What a good novelist does with a throwaway that serves no fictional purpose is throw it away.

I learned so much from the writing on 'King of the Hill', which I thought was just magnificent. They would let real moments happen in this animated, one-dimensional world. I feel like I've been in school this whole time.

I purposely adopted a style in my storytelling wherein I don't have to explain everything or why the story is moving in a particular way.

I make hip-hop, but use Doom as a character to convey stories that a normal dude can't. You have writers that write about crazy characters, but that doesn't mean the writer himself is crazy.

I'm a big believer in writing really good dialogue.

I love Meghna Gulzar's film making and her style of story telling. In her films, every character, small or big, is beautifully etched.

Great novels have great characterization no matter what. But multiple points of view let me examine characters from entirely different perspectives, allowing me to learn more about everyone in the process.

When I read interviews with people like Kevin Barry or Colin Barrett, who I hugely admire, they don't really seem to come up against the question of likeability even though their characters, in some instances, are really horrible.

There's a bizarre insistence on how a story should be. 'The protagonist must be sympathetic!' they say. Whatever that means. I never engage in that discussion. I never use that word, 'sympathetic.' I just know 'interesting.'

You just drop a character like this that and the other and it's done.

I spent ages figuring out things like viewpoint, how you tell the story, and so on.

In prose, leaps of logic can be made while the protagonist thinks about things and arrives at conclusions. Even with voiceover, there's no real way of having an inner voice without it taking over the entire story.

The most fascinating powers don't mean a thing if the guy's poorly motivated or dull, and the most generic powers won't hurt a well-motivated character. Personality and motivation are what make Magneto, Magneto and not Cosmic Boy. The powers work for him, but it's his motivation that makes him the character he is.

Creating characters is like throwing together ingredients for a recipe. I take characteristics I like and dislike in real people I know, or know of, and use them to embellish and define characters.

I love thinking of cartoon characters feeling really real feelings. And I love to do that, not just as a fan, but as a creator, so if people want to look for those levels, they're actually there.

When the characters are really alive before their author, the latter does nothing but follow them in their action, in their words, in the situations which they suggest to him.