Story Understanding Quotes

I don't think, as an actor, you should define what genre you want to do. Once you do that, you lose the sight to see the film and what its story is all about.

A novel makes it possible to understand not just events, but the people who control the events; not only their choices, but also their motives.

I feel like there are things I can relate to in every character. But I feel like when you read a script, you don't get to see the definition behind someone, you just get to read what the person goes through and find a place to come from to make it real.

I think it's important that a director be able to know his characters inside and out.

Well, first of all, you read the script a million times. Because what the script gives you are given circumstances. Given circumstances are all the facts of your character.

I like to keep at my craft. I like to keep reading scripts, whether I'm in it or not because of the fact that what would I do in a certain case? How would this happen or how would that go? I like to keep working with my mind, so when I do perform I have something to perform with, and it's not just like trying on new clothes. You're trying on a suit, but you know where the heck the pants go.

He who reads a story only once is condemned to read the same story his whole life.

Smart writers really take their time in investing in backstories and characters. As a viewer, you have to invest in them and love them before you can chip away at what's going on more on a deeper level with secondary characters.

The deepest failures any fiction writer is likely to have are failures of not quite comprehending the truth of the story that he or she is telling.

The first time I read a crime novel - I think it may have been an Elmore Leonard book - it took some time for me to realise how the genre worked. There were about 20 characters on the first page, and I wasn't used to this. I started to enjoy it when I saw that was how crime books worked.

I usually read a script from an audience perspective first, and then look more closely at the character only.

As an actor, it's your job to find the way to play a character. I think you can latch on to some things that might have happened.

I just read the scripts that come to me, and I see the ones which I really kind of understand and connect with, whether that's a science fiction or a period piece. It doesn't really matter as long as they're original and I have something to do with the character.

The Leftovers was an absolutely extraordinary experience. After the first season of learning to work with Damon Lindelof and Tom Perrotta, and all of the writers, you didn't question it because it all made sense. Because Damon knows those characters so well and has thought it through so well, there was never a time that I asked a question where it wasn't answered fully.

I think I approached 'Captain Phillips' as I would any project. I always try to understand the story, characters, and themes as deeply as possible and then work as hard as I can to make those things come to life.

If you read a script enough, especially a good script - I try to read it 40 to 50 times before you begin so you get a sense of the arc: what happens before, what happens after, what happens during.

I don't think it takes a brain surgeon to understand how to read a story.

I read the script first to get the perspective on the whole story, the writing, and how the character I'm auditioning for is talked about by other people or relates to other people; from there, I go into the sides.

When my lady and I sit down and watch TV, I find she gets annoyed at characters because they don't do what she would do in the situation. I'm always like, 'Well, she has to do that because that's what the story is.'

I do have an innate understanding of where a story should or shouldn't go, in a way that I don't think can be taught.

You will most appreciate 'Freddy and Fredericka' if you are familiar with the story of the Fall, the Good Hermit, 'Tom Jones,' 'Huckleberry Finn,' 'Paradise Lost,' 'Henry V,' and 'My Cousin Vinny.' That doesn't mean that you can't enjoy or understand it on an emotional level, free of all allusion, which is the test of any book of fiction.

My starting point is always to read a script and have a conversation with the director about what their vision is, and then, after that, I love to do research.

A novel's whole pattern is rarely apparent at the outset of writing, or even at the end; that is when the writer finds out what a novel is about, and the job becomes one of understanding and deepening or sharpening what is already written. That is finding the theme.

As the director, I try to go in and know as much as I can about the material. I really try to go in and understand what all the characters are about, what the movie's going to look like.

I think once everything is in place, once you've kind of wrapped your head around the story and the character, it's very liberating and you can start doing things like you would do.