The comedies are not a million laughs on the set. Its business and the dramas are business as well, really. When I'm writing it I struggle more with drama because I started out in comedy.
If you're a drama writer, obviously you always have to tell the truth; there's no element of fiction in at all.
A talent for drama is not a talent for writing, but is ability to articulate human relationships.
Any play is hard to write, and plays are getting harder and harder to get on the stage.
I'd like to have one of my plays on Broadway.
My degree was in education, but the idea of being a teacher lost out to being a reporter. I worked at a newspaper for a while, then went to New York and worked in PR at RCA and NBC, and at 'The United States Steel Hour,' a drama series.
I would like to write a play.
Anything that Aaron Sorkin writes, I could watch a million times. One of the few shows that I've watched in repeats was 'The West Wing.'
I never wanted to be a playwright.
I would say 80% of the scripts I get are dramas and not comedies or romantic comedies, which is funny because that's what I do every week.
Mystery writing involves solving a puzzle, but 'high suspense' writing is a situation whereby the writer thrusts the hero/heroine into high drama.
My real name is Madeleine Wickham, under which I write dramas with an edge of humour. As Sophie Kinsella it's fast, all-out comedies, such as the 'Shopaholic' series.
I wrote for 'The Sopranos' and worked on big, blustery characters for quite a while.
I feel like I work on scripts for comedy as well as dramatic stuff the same.
In terms of script, Bollywood should learn from South Indian scripts. Not talking about the fights and action, I am talking about the drama bit.
The joy of writing drama is putting yourself into different people's heads.
I think really good drama comes down to real human emotion. That's what makes us all tick, and that's what I've always been drawn to when it comes to scripts is real human emotion and dealing with that.
Having written Camp David as a drama, I could see the drama maybe a little more clearly when I wrote the book.
The only way you can write about a happy family in a drama is to make them unhappy.
I never thought I would write about Chicago, and I definitely never thought I would write a drama.
In a sense, all actors are character actors, because we're all playing different characters. But a lot of the time - and I don't know, because I'm not a writer - but writers a lot of times write second- and third-tier characters better than they write primary characters. I guess they're more fun.
I've been working on this feature script for Master Class, a play by Terrence McNally that won a lot of Tonys.
That's the best advice I can give - when you're trying to write a comedy, first write a drama, and then make it funny.
I just personally feel like the best writing for actors exists in cable television.
I can write dramas that are about inside and outside the courtroom.
