Michel Faber Quotes

Marc Cherry is so good at writing himself into a corner, then writing himself out of that corner. It's really fun to watch that.

In terms of fiction, I'd rather go out and have a good time than read a book about someone having a good or bad time.

I never know, when I start writing a story, what's going to happen, or how it will all get sorted out.

My fictitious characters will take the bit between their teeth and gallop off and do something that I hadn't counted on. However, I always insist on dragging them back to the straight and narrow.

This is the story, this is your character, I have the sense of the landscape, I have the sense of the scene, I have all that stuff. But I'm also looking for something else to happen, an accident or something. You're focused on the story you intend to tell and then you have to have a peripheral net out to catch these accidents.

I would never make up a character who didn't exist or an event that didn't transpire. If you're a real writer, you have other tools in your toolbox to build drama.

Good scripts and interesting stories are hard enough to find.

I think that's what fiction writing is actually all about. It's about trying to solve problems in creative ways.

I love the idea of real-life experiences finding their way into fiction. I think that's really cool.

I never know as a writer when I set out into a novel where it's going to take me.

When I see an image in my head that compels me, where there's this mystery about what's going to happen next or could happen next, I'll be intrigued. There are so many scripts that you read, and you know exactly what's going to happen, and there aren't too many where you can't tell within the first 20 pages where it's going.

So I work hard to present the human side of my characters while not neglecting the plot.

I'm not like J.K. Rowling, where I know there's going to be this number of seasons, and I know exactly what's going to happen. I would be so bored if that was the case. There would be no journey. There would be nothing to discover.

If you don't spend the time you need on developing characters and finding stories, complicated stories, the audience gets tired because they think they're seeing the same thing again and again.

It always comes down to script and characters.

I try to mix the characters up and not be second guessed by the audience.

Every writer has compressed time and procedure, and used clarifying dialogue. That's not a scandal: it's a legitimate dramatic technique.

There are so many projects that you go into hoping the story works, and here comes a new third act and that kind of thing.

Though my stories aren't autobiographical, I do sometimes use things from my life.

Taking a comic strip character is very hard to write. Because comics are meant to work in one page, to work in frames with minimalistic dialogue. And a lot of it is left to the imagination of the reader. To do that in film, you've got to be a little more explanatory. And that requires a good screenplay and good dialogue.

A good scenario doesn't make a good science fiction story - but it's a setting within which a good science fiction story might be told.

I started writing stories in my spare time.

As a writer, my only responsibility is to tell a compelling story.

I enjoy the writing process and producing; I enjoy seeing an idea come to fruition. I'm driven by very complex characters. You look at the pilot of 'Breaking Bad,' where there's so much depth to the character, you can't help but be invested when you watch.

My major allegiance has been to storytelling, not to history.