Ashwin Sanghi Quotes

Although Bill Finger literally typed the scripts in the early days, he wrote the scripts from ideas that we mutually collaborated on. Many of the unique concepts and story twists also came from my own fertile imagination.

Writing is possibly an art, but crime writing is definitely a craft.

It's much like writing a screenplay with someone else and that's how we view it, I think.

I always claim that the writer has done 90 percent of the director's work.

I had never written anything. And I had never studied writing. So my motives were pure: I had a great story... a courtroom drama that I sort of fictionalized, and that became 'A Time to Kill.'

I thought at first that I might write mysteries, but then I said, 'Mysteries have plots, and I'm not sure I can do that yet.'

There's a fairy story called the 'The Shoemaker and the Elves' where this old cobbler keeps leaving leather out overnight and wakes up the next day, and there's a new pair of shoes. Co-authoring is a little like that. You send off the manuscript to your partner, and a few days later, you check your email, and hey, there's more book in here!

I'm especially keen to work with good scriptwriters on stories we have developed.

The things I discovered when writing 'Line of Duty' were the tools you have available to write a thriller.

It's always an amazing gift to be able to work with storytellers who 'get it' and who can not only draw anything but can draw it better and more dynamically than you'd ever envisioned.

I may have a story idea but everything starts moving when I am able to see my characters clearly. They then organically lead or respond to the story or the universe I want to create.

I knew I wanted to write about a nanny, but it was difficult for me to find a narrative rhythm.

I'm a huge believer in story being this invisible scaffolding that no one ever recognizes or realizes is actually making the audience engaged in what's going on. There is no formula for it.

Working with George Miller was an education. It was eight college degrees in character development and directing all at once.

I like to let the story flesh itself out, and usually, the characters make their own decisions as things get under way. Dialogue especially seems to write itself once I'm familiar with the characters and their backgrounds.

Stories often take their own course once you start to write them, especially when you have the benefit of a writers' room and a team of people augmenting and adding to the material.

I didn't even think about good guy, bad guy when I started. I was that unfamiliar with the business.

I feel lucky to be able to work with such great filmmakers on such wonderful stories.

If getting a contract was relatively straightforward, writing fiction was far harder than I could have imagined, and there were moments during the long and torturous edit process when it seemed that 'Zulu Hart,' the first of the trilogy, would never be fit for public consumption.

No reader wants to sit through the same scene four times in a row, unless they're radically different.

That's why I hate the outlines and treatments, because all you get are cliches. If you put things down on paper as your plan, it's very hard to get those ideas out of your head and do something better.

A film only works when its content works. The visuals can be breathtaking, but if the content is not good, it won't work.

Well, I think if you're telling a story, a three act structure will just naturally emerge out of it. But I also love it when a film doesn't feel like it's anchored too rigidly to that structure and you feel like anything could happen.

There's a problem with narratives. Most that spring to mind are fictional.

The liveliest effusions of wit and humour are simply what the reader of a novel has a right to expect.