Les Standiford Quotes

I don't really have a drive toward being a director at all. Not that I wouldn't rule it out, but I just don't think my instincts lie necessarily in a very visual way. But I am very interested in storytelling, narrative and character development, so writing is something that I absolutely want to do.

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 have also led you astray by talking of technique as if it were something that could be separated from the rest of the story. Technique can't operate at all, of course, except on believable material.

I do want to write about Jane Whitefield again, but only when I have a good enough idea - something I've figured out about her that's news and that's worth a reader's time.

Short stories are fiction's R & D department, and failed or less-than-conclusive experiments are not just to be expected but to be hoped for.

People who actually tell stories, meaning people who write novels and make feature films, don't see themselves as storytellers.

There's got to be something you want to tell and that's the engine which spurs all of the work you have to do in order to create the story, but you have to love some sort of nugget of what you're telling to be a filmmaker.

I like novelists who can create other interesting worlds.

Every day, I learn something new. I think one of the most exciting things for a writer is to work on a TV show. It's like a novel. You have a really long time to develop and learn about the characters, and you can just really keep digging in deeper, every week.

TV is where a writer can write his novel.

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

There are a lot of good stories out there, but I haven't found too many great scripts.

I learned to write fiction the way I learned to read fiction - by skipping the parts that bored me.

I am also working on a couple of short stories for anthologies. This is new to me and I'm enjoying it.

One of the reasons I started working at 'South Park,' actually, was that I wanted to learn how to structure things and how to tell a story.

Every moment of a science fiction story must represent the triumph of writing over world-building.

I don't know if it's good or bad, but when I first started writing I imitated the narrative thrust of a movie. And as I worked, I learned what you can do in fiction that you can't do in movies, and vice-versa.

I started as a writer; I started writing when I was little. The acting and directing was an outgrowth of my desire to tell stories.

I was trained in storytelling by Jim Shooter, Stan Lee, and Larry Hama. Doesn't make me a genius, and there really isn't anything fancy about the stage direction in my scripts.

I have always enjoyed literature classes, and I took a fiction workshop for writing and analyzing at Curtis... I don't know if would do it professionally, but it's nice to have the balance with the music.

Ever since I was introduced to Ekta Kapoor, I have learnt a great deal from her storytelling, and the learning continues.

There are many oral historians in America, but my books are made using the rules of novel writing. I have a beginning, a plot, characters.

I enjoy both TV writing and novel writing, and they are very similar. The goal is to entertain and amuse the audience, and I subscribe to this P.G. Wodehouse piece of advice: "Try to give pleasure with every sentence."

Outlines are the last resource of bad fiction writers who wish to God they were writing masters' theses.

I don't think I'm more of a screenwriter than I am a fiction writer. I'm more of a reader than a film-watcher, so I imagine that I'm not approaching fiction or films in a particularly cinematic way.