Last, but not least -- in fact, this is most important -- you need a happy ending. However, if you can create tragic situations and jerk a few tears before the happy ending, it will work much better.
For me, that emotional payoff is what it’s all about. I want you to laugh or cry when you read a story...or do both at the same time. I want your heart, in other words. If you want to learn something, go to school.
There aren't many great adverts for marriage or parenthood. It always looks so stressful, and that's what I've been scared of. What you don't realise is how much you're going to get back.
That's what fiction writers do: create characters and do terrible things to them for the entertainment of others. If they feel guilty enough, they write happy endings.
That's what you do when the curtain is falling--you give the line that the audience wants to hear.
A good book or movie or screenplay should be emotionally satisfying. When they're done, you want people to breathe a deep sigh and say, 'Wow.'
Audiences know the form in their bones, they know that romantic comedies end in an uplifting way.
The most rewarding part of writing for TV is - a year ago I would have said it's just watching it on TV, it's just having been done with it and then collecting all that energy.
You don't get the pay-off when you're playing a quiet character, so sometimes you want to just throw out all your work and say, "Okay, let me do something really funny or gimmicky, just so that I can get some attention in this scene."
The thing I learned from 'Pride and Glory' is that people like to feel a little better leaving the theater than they did coming in.
Lately I've been falling asleep listening to 'Common One' by Van Morrison, specifically the song 'Summertime in England.' It's 15 minutes long, so to make it through the entire song is a real task unto itself, but Van has that emotional payoff that makes even his most tiresome songs more powerful than most people's entire catalog.
I outline in some detail, but even after the outline is done I often get a new idea that is an improvement, so the outline is a living, breathing thing as well. I also re-outline when I'm two-thirds done, to be sure that there is an emotional payoff from all the plot lines and to be sure the story is as tight as it can be.
My ideal relationship with the reader is that at certain points they will have said, 'I'm finding this quite tough, but I'm going to hang in there,' then at the end they will say, 'Oh God, I'm glad I hung on, it was so worth it.'
The big difference I think between tv and stage is definitely the immediate buzz that you get. And that's not just as an actor, as an audience member you're getting the chance to have this kind of two-way process where the actors and the audience are experiencing the same thing. With tv you often have to wait months and months down the line to actually get the pay-off. Whereas with theatre it's a very immediate thing.
I think the whole tension about romanticism is the way it builds and builds, and the moment it's consummated, the tension's over.
Every single moment in 'Hereditary' is linked to a moment in the end for the payoff. I think it has the ability of captivating people the same way that 'Manchester By the Sea' did. It has that audience because it's so wrapped in human drama.
I've made movies on every part of the spectrum, and you do understand when you go into certain movies that you're trying to elicit a certain kind of response from the audience, and people get a real sense of satisfaction when they're rooting for a character and the character pulls it off.
I don't enjoy doing stand-up. I see it as being like exercise: I feel good about it after I've done it.
Because I write realistic fiction, I generally don't think about fixing anyone - I just think about how I want to feel at the end of the book - And I try to write toward that feeling.
Endings don't have anything to do with what your movie is about. Now, there is an emotional climax, there's an emotional resolution that is 100 percent important. If I get that wrong, get your money back.
I want it to feel very satisfying, the ending, so you've felt like you were going on a journey and we were trying to lead you somewhere. So going into that, it's made it extremely funny but also a very emotional last season of the 'The Mindy Project' .
For me, I guess I feel like the notion of 'feel good' entertainment... I'm all for it, but I just think you really, really, really have to earn it. I'm not sure I have a lot of movies in me where I see a world that earns it.
I look at 'Friday Night Lights' as one of my all-time favorite series finales, and that is what you want. After all the roads you've traveled with these people, you just want to know that they're going to be happy. I'm a big believer in shows that make that choice.
The half-hour of crowded anticipation, how fully it pays for the sterile hour that follows!
Audiences know exactly what's coming and they know from the beginning of the movie that everything's going to be OK and there will be high jinks that will get you from the beginning to the end, and eventually all the misunderstandings will be worked out and everyone will be in love.
