You're living with these characters for years and years, you need to have a lock on who they are as people, what they like, what they don't like, what they experience, and what they go through.
The best parts of any story to me are the unexpected things.
A character wandering around asking, 'Who am I?' isn't, in and of itself, a story I'm interested in telling.
I'm reading 'Ten Storey Love Song' by Richard Milward. I read his first novel, 'Apples,' after hearing a reading of his in the Hague. I really enjoyed it, so I've started this one.
The characters don't all have to be likable, and they don't all have to be hateable. As long as it's interesting and you connect to them and they resonate with you and you want to find out what happens and it feels authentic, then we have something.
When I'm engaged in a story my health is not a big deal, but when I'm not doing anything, if you sit me down, I can get tied up in my own medical dramas. So I much prefer to work.
I just want to be told a story, and I want to believe I'm living that story, and I don't give a thought to influences or method or any other writerly concerns.
A film based on a jolly good John Grisham book is fine, but I like to get a bit under the skin.
My easiest judgment for a script is 'do I want to keep reading it?'
I frustrate myself as a writer. There are certain things that I'll think, 'Well, that would be really fun to play... if somebody else was playing this character.'
To be completely honest, I just like whatever tells a good story. Put me in whatever setting, scenario, genre. If you're telling a good story, it's great and it's fun to get caught up in.
Fiction is about intimacy with characters, events, places.
I don't think I ever watched a movie without being totally immersed in the story. But at the same time, I had to keep some distance from it. I had to question what the narrative was trying to tell me or was injecting in my brain.
You need to be invested in what happens. The characters are your conduit to the story. Many modern horror films are fun but not frightening because one has not connected with the characters.
I think the biggest challenges for franchises are keeping them fresh and exciting, and most times, you need a good bad guy to make that thing continually work, and sometimes they don't.
More often than not, the experience of shooting the movie has been disappointing and the end product has been a mere shadow of what I hoped it would be. But immersing myself in the story - that's what I like best of all.
I don't like sympathetic characters.
I admit," I said, "that a second murder in a book often cheers things up." - Hastings
Mostly I sat down and said, 'I'm not going to write a boring story.' And that actually, surprisingly, solves most of your problems.
Whenever people say they didn't like the main character of a book, they mean they didn't like the book. The main character has to be a friend? I don't get that.
I hate when you see a film and after one scene you know what's going to happen and you can predict the whole story.
If a movie is really working, you forget for two hours your Social Security number and where your car is parked. You are having a vicarious experience. You are identifying, in one way or another, with the people on the screen.
Watching familiar characters take unexpected turns is very appealing.
You can tell how good a filmmaker is if you can turn the sound down but you can still feel the story.
If a story isn't working, I'm simply unable to finish it. That's what usually tells me something is wrong.
