For me, writing is a job. I do not separate the work from the act of writing like two things that have nothing to do with each other. I arrange words one after another, or one in front of another, to tell a story, to say something that I consider important or useful, or at least important or useful to me.
'Betrayed' starts off with Shane Gallagher rescuing Elena Reyes and a group of hostages from a madman with a gun. And as the story progresses and Shane's feelings for Elena blossom, his urge to protect her grows.
Judaism is not just a religion but a people, and the food and customs of one part of the people is connected to the other part of the people. They are part of a larger story.
Every creative story is different. And yet every creative story is the same: There was nothing, now there is something. It's almost like magic.
I think my story says that, when women are given the chance and the opportunity, that we can achieve a lot. We deliver.
Humanity's legacy of stories and storytelling is the most precious we have. All wisdom is in our stories and songs. A story is how we construct our experiences. At the very simplest, it can be: 'He/she was born, lived, died.' Probably that is the template of our stories - a beginning, middle, and end. This structure is in our minds.
Writing a story is kind of like surfing, as opposed to the novel, where you use a GPS to get somewhere. With surfing, you kind of jump.
The story of Hosea and Gomer is the second most powerful picture of God's love in the Bible. Other than Christ's death, there is no greater picture of love.
Sometimes kids ask how I've been able to write so many books. The answer is simple: one word at a time. Which is another good lesson, I think. You don't have to do everything at once. You don't have to know how every story is going to end. You just have to take that next step, look for that next idea, write that next word.
We're all humans. Any human can tell any human's story. I don't want to have this conversation about black film or white film anymore. I wanna have conversations about film.
You are always hoping that movie audiences are interested in characters and interested in story values rather than just mindless special effects. But you never know.
I knew from my television work that I could sit down and put words on paper but didn't know if I had the talent to tell a story in novel form.
Now, I admire The Sims as a game, but from a story viewpoint, there are two glaring problems. First, your relationship with those characters is like they're bugs in a jar. There's no empathy. And secondly, you've got this clunky, chemistry-set interface between you and them, with bars to show how tired or angry they are. It's all tell not show.
The only reason I've shared my story is to take that tiny baby step of breaking down the stigma attached to depression.
For me, when I 'discover' a story, there is a feeling of buoyancy and clarity, perhaps similar to early morning out on a prairie highway, when darkness lifts and reveals the outline of farmhouses and copses of trees in the distance.
In truth, I have always been amazed by a group of people who all work toward putting one person's vision forward - that's an interesting story for me.
In a story, you have to have a theme and an angle, you have to have a beginning, middle and an end. You have to have a defining moment and kick it to death. You gotta be able to recognize that, by the way. It probably takes experience.
I was on a panel with Marshall McLuhan in Canada. Someone says, 'Mr. McLuhan, I read your book, and I disagree with you.' And he says, 'Oh, you read my book? Then you only know half the story.'
I don't think we'll ever lose the desire for people to tell stories or to hear stories or to be entrapped in a beautiful story.
When you go into the theatre and the lights dim, you want to entertain people from beginning to end. You want them to be swept up in your story, on the edge of their seats, unable to wait to see what happens next, be blown away and afterwards just go, 'Wow!'
My mother and father were both much more remarkable than any story of mine can make them. They seem to me just mythically wonderful.
I was the little French boy who grew up hearing people talk of De Gaulle and the Resistance. France against the Nazis! Then when that boy grew up, he began to uncover things. We began to legitimately ask the question, 'What exactly did our parents do during the Occupation?' We discovered it was not the story they were telling us.
Curating, in the modern sense, is something I gravitate to. Taking different ideas from a bunch of different places and putting them into one place or space, a story that makes sense or a new idea. Everything is remixed and taken from other things to make something new.
With young people, it's how brassy and flashy can you be. But you get a bit older, it's about how restrained can you be. You have to feel it all, think it all, but you don't have to play it - it's just gotta be there, and if the story's good and the script's good, people will see it.
How many times do you read about 'the Cinderella story,' the story of the underdog, the story of the ordinary human being, often subjected to cruelty and ignorance and neglect, who somehow triumphs?
I'm not a character like Rapunzel or Cinderella; my story looks like any other.
My crash and burn over drugs and alcohol is very well known; I've never, ever hidden that story. If there are people who would not vote for me because of that history, I understand.
When I started, I was an artist; I wanted to be an artist. I became an actor almost by accident. I acted for fifteen years and tried to produce. I looked for stories that were the story beneath the story that you thought you knew, like 'The Candidate'.
I think what makes 'Maze Runner' so unique is that it is a brotherhood. It's really about a group of boys. It's not really a love story - there's no love triangle, none of that. It's mostly about a brotherhood of boys who really don't know what's going on.
The grim reality is that most start-ups fail. Most new products are not successful. Yet the story of perseverance, creative genius, and hard work persists.
While this has been a private part of my family's life, it is now clear a media story will soon emerge. My father tragically ended his life while battling terminal cancer in 1979.
I think that 'Floor Sample' is a story of resiliency, a lifelong spiritual search, and a lifelong sense of spiritual companionship that is most often expressed as creativity. My desire in writing the book was to step from behind the icon of 'Julia the teacher' and introduce 'Julia the artist.'
Beyond diversity, the story of Obama's influence on the courts is more complex. Indeed, it could serve as a metaphor for his Presidency: symbolically rich but substantively hazy. Obama took office after years of intense conservative focus on the courts.
Obviously because of my personal connection to Mandela and having had his story as part of my childhood, I knew how awesome he was.
All I can guess is that when I write, I forget that it's not real. I'm living the story, and I think people can read that sincerity about the characters. They are real to me while I'm writing them, and I think that makes them real to the readers as well.
Music is a big part of my life. I listen to different genres, and I choose the music that will inspire the next part of my story.