Story Involvement Quotes

All of us are hungry to be a part of great stories. There are some fortunate ones who get it early in their career, and there are some, for whom it takes a little while to get to be even considered for a part which could be promising.

But I've always felt that the less you know about an actor's personal life, the more you can get involved in the story in which he's playing a character. And I don't like to see movies where you know about everything that happens behind the scenes. I can't engage in the story if I know what's going on in the actor's head.

When I have a book I enjoy, I'm partly in the book. I'm not just observing it.

It might be a very human thing across the board, but we, in America, love a story - we need a story to get involved in. But then everything becomes more about how the story protects a certain perception as we pick sides.

What I read and what I go to the movies for is not to find a best friend, not to find inspirations, not necessarily for a hero's journey. It's to be involved with characters that are maybe incredibly different from me, that may be incredibly bad but that feel authentic.

I look for characters that interest me, and a story that keeps me involved and makes me want to know what happens next.

The stories I work on, especially for any length of time, do tend to become personal to me.

If the breaking news story had to do with hard news, politics specifically, I had a lot to do with it. If it had to do with music, Kurt Loder was more involved.

The first series I wrote, 'L.A. Candy,' was always meant to be a three-book series, so when I started out it was all outlined that way and by the time I was done with the third book, I had become so involved and the process and the stories, I was a little bit sad to be done.

I'm not standing above the audience trying to manipulate them as a puppet master or a trickster; I'm inside the story I'm writing and making and thinking about things very seriously and feeling very deeply at times, and trying to translate that into a narrative.

Journalism classes teach us that one must extract oneself from the story in order to report without bias, but often we need to be in the story in order to understand, to connect, to help the audience identify or else it has no heart; it could be a robot telling the story, for all anyone cares.

I was interested in being part of interesting stories. As an actor, you generally don't get to choose what projects you are part of, so I've been very fortunate that The Book of Mormon was something I got to be part of.

I think movies in general should have more respect for the audience than they do. Too many films are afraid to confuse people, so all the information is given to them right away, and there's nothing left for the film to do. It ruins many stories, because everything becomes obvious and predictable. I want my films to engage people more and make them more actively involved in the story.

When you reach the editing stage, it is often the case that you can get too involved with the story to detect errors. You can see words in your head that aren't actually there on the page, sentences blur together and errors escape you, and you follow plot threads and see only the images in your skull.

Science fiction fans are the smartest fans in television. They just are. They're just so smart, and they know so much detail and information. They're a part of the story and they inform your character, as well. We all listen to the fans, and we love their feedback and the attention they give us.

I have always been a person who wanted to act. I have never dreamed about being a hero. I never think of a part as small or big. If I like a script I am offered, I immerse myself into the world it set in.

You need to be able to climb into a narrative and zip it up under your chin. You need to be able to see through the eyes of the hero, smell what he's smelling, hear what he's hearing.

I love books that give you space to climb inside there. And you have to run to keep up in places, and you have to fill in a lot of blanks yourself. So it almost becomes your story.