Jonathan Tropper Quotes

Because I was a television writer for many years, I write very conversationally. I put things straight, and with a lot of humor.

I'm not really good at character or plot development. I'm just interested in big comedic moments.

I don't think I could write a straight drama.

I'm a novelist first, and I wrote a bunch of books, and everything I write, I just find people are more interesting when there's an element of humor to it.

I love funny women. I love writing funny women characters.

And the blood of brave men was shed like unto the shedding of rain from a black cloud.

I am a comic writer, which means I get to slay the dragons, and shoot the bull.

I try to give all my characters a sense of humor, so I guess I feel like I have done comedy, but maybe I'm better known for drama.

For a culture that has such a problem with death, we seem to deal with it in a quite bizarre way. We see people shot, killed and blown up, and we find it funny and sexy and all those things. But, the reality of it is that every day people die, and people are really sad and they grieve and they go through a really difficult process with it.

If I had to write long-form stuff with descriptions of rooms, it would be so boring for me. I like writing dialogue and jokes and situational stuff.

Whenever I write, I write very dialogue-heavy things because I love to force my characters to interact with one another.

Writing a whole series was a crash course in screenwriting, which is a very different muscle to standup comedy writing.

Thousands of people are being buried and no one attends the funerals,' said one of the soldiers. 'In peacetime it's the other way round: one coffin and a hundred people carrying flowers.

You have to have empathy, knowledge and compassion for your characters if you're a writer.

When I am writing anything in general, I just want to tell the story that exists in my head; I don't try to write a parable or make a point.

Any story that I can consider worth telling is one that you could tell in words.

A professional soldier understands that war means killing people, war means maiming people, war means families left without fathers and mothers.

A good writer is basically a story teller, not a scholar or a redeemer of mankind.

If I'm not clear with the character, I can't do anything with it. But once I get that character, the possibilities are endless. When you have such a defined character, I feel like I can actually read the phone book and make it funny.

My sister and brother are both writers as well. We are constantly discussing story and plot lines. And I love to discuss story ideas with my husband.

David Mamet's writing is pretty spectacular, obviously. I like the honesty of it; I like how funny it is and how sad it is.

You can't be funny if you don't have good material.

What I look for in any character, good or bad, is whether I can hear him speak. If I can imagine him that clearly, then I can write about him.

I've got a particular way of writing novels, and that carries over into the way I write comics and games, too. I'm a news journalist by background, so I approach everything as reporting - I treat it as real, I ask the questions I'd ask in a real situation, and I let the characters speak for themselves.