Story Assessment Quotes

I think a good story's a good story and a good character's a good character.

I remember reading 'Disturbia,' one of the first scripts I ever got, and I go 'Pfft, who wants to make a movie about a guy in a house?'

Normally when I'm sent a script I'll read it through to see how it hangs as a story and then I'll go back and read it through again and look at the character.

I believe the only way a writer can keep himself up to the mark is by examining each story quite coldly before he starts writing it and asking himself if it is all right as a story. I mean, once you go saying to yourself, 'This is a pretty weak plot as it stands, but I'm such a hell of a writer that my magic touch will make it okay,' you're sunk. If they aren't in interesting situations, characters can't be major characters, not even if you have the rest of the troop talk their heads off about them.

I worked in script development, many years ago, and read a lot of scripts. Between that and the scripts I've read as an actor, and I'm a writer as well, I think I have a pretty good sense about whether the bones of a story are there and whether the structure is intact.

Writers would submit scripts to me, and if I liked one well enough to submit to magazine editors, I had the know-how whether the story was good or bad.

Sometimes if you tell me what a story is about in just a few sentences, I can tell you if it's going to be a success.

When you can state the theme of a story, when you can separate it from the story itself, then you can be sure the story is not a very good one.

We will wait to see if it is a doozy before we decide how to cover it, and what it all means.

I can tell very early on, reading a script, within six or seven pages, whether I'm looking at real people, and whether I can see and hear real people.

I have a lot of scripts that come my way, and some of them take a bit longer to read than others. There are a lot of things that I have to pass on because I'm just not into it, and sometimes the story is slightly forced.