I love doing period work, like all the trappings and the wigs and everything. It really helps when it's such a different world that you're immersing yourself in; it helps to get into the story, I think, and step into that different place.
It is true that the movie is perhaps my most politically-charged. The story is thrust into motion by the idea of what do you do when your 13 year old daughter comes home pregnant. And not only is she pregnant, but she wants to keep the baby.
Originally, I thought the story of the Alamo was all these men defending their liberty when they could have left, knowing they were going to die. That's without a doubt what appealed to me, the romance and the nobility. But, as in life, the more you dig the more you find out that things weren't quite like that.
The radios are going to dictate. That's another fight. That's another story there. I wish they just let it be.
We're special because dreams that are impossible anywhere else, come true here. That's not just my story. That's your story. That's our story.
As a kid, I didn't need to be convinced the future promised peril and oppression, so when I started thinking up the middle-grade science fiction novel that became 'The Boy at the End of the World,' it seemed only natural to build the story around a dark vision of the future. In my book, civilization has nearly destroyed itself.
I've been planning a chunk of time to myself for years now. It's been my intention to finish 'Astonishing X-Men,' 'I Am Legion' and 'Planetary' and then sort of 'disappear' from doing comic interiors for a couple of years. I'll pop up here and there with a short story or two, old promises to friends and all, but no major series work.
I try to tell a story that's good enough to win the right to integrate eternal themes into it. If it's poorly written or comes across as a sermon, then obviously you don't reach people, because they're aware that you're imposing something on a story that isn't innate to it.
Audience come with expectations, and our job is to engage them for two hours. We take efforts to make the story more interesting and also present it in such a way that it is liked by all the audience.
So if we're going to build new applications that require a large time investment, like say movie editing - today that doesn't matter for the enterprise desktop, but eventually it will when we get closer to consumers - you really need to have a cross-platform story.
For every story you hear that's tragic, there's another that's equally tragic or more so. I think you come to look at it as part of life.
In ordinary detective novels you never see the consequences of what happens in a story in the next book. That you do in mine.
I'm often asked how I get ideas for my stories. The answer is there's no single way; every story is different.
I would say a good leader brings results. A great leader writes a new story, it's different. Obviously a new story has to incorporate a lot of results. But a story is a chapter in the life of a company that people want to write and want to remember.
I found out a long time ago that if I didn't have a good story for a song, I could just make one up! Now it seems over half the stories in my show are made up. The funny thing is, those seem to be the ones that resonate the most with the audiences.
I will not go into a story unprepared. I will do my homework, and that's something I learned at an early age.
Character is always my driving force. And to tell a good story and to provide an entertaining read.
I can tell you that I never begin working on a story until I have a title centered at the top of the first page.
First and foremost, The Quiet Invasion is a first contact story. What would we do if we actually found evidence of alien life out there? It's also about politics.
Spielberg read the 'Understudy' and decided that was the voice he wanted to write 'Smash.' He wanted a story that had humanity and humor and high-stakes dreams.
I love the Spider-Man story. I watched the cartoon on TV when I was a kid, and my brother wore his Spider-Man pyjamas everywhere.
Sometimes, a writer's life alone can tell a story.
I see so, so many novels written by people who are obviously short story writers. What they end up doing, it's going the full distance, covering three hundred pages or so, but they do it by just writing five or six long stories, and weaving them together, making them interdependent.
A conventional crime story is simple - it's just a corpse in the river or something, and a detective with an alcohol problem.
I always tell my students to seek out other writers as models, and though it took me years to heed my own advice, it really was life-altering when I found writers who wrote long stories, full of back story and side plots and sub-histories.
I want to make books. I want to take pictures and then write all over the pictures. And then I don't have to say a complete story, because I have the picture, and I have just a word.
I have always felt that this story is universal. When I began to understand the details of the history, I felt that the most compelling aspect was not what happened, but what continues to happen and how it is denied.
Batman and Superman are very different characters but they're both iconic and elemental. Finding the right story for them both is the key.
I wanted to tell my story because I believe that if I can inspire or motivate even 10 or 15 people to start losing weight, it's a very big achievement. If I've managed to do it, anybody can.
Mine is a story about a teenage single mother who struggled to keep her young family afloat. It's a story about a young woman who was given a precious opportunity to work her way up in the world. It's a story about resiliency, and sacrifice, and perseverance. And you're damn right it's a true story.
We may not know the whole story in our lifetime.
We're trying to tell a very full story of 'Nashville' and these characters in Nashville, and I'm really hopeful that we're going to be able to do something as innovative as 'American Horror Story' and 'Friday Night Lights.' And I think so far, we're on the right path for that.
Picking apart a story for its scientific underpinnings doesn't diminish it, it enhances it, makes us dream of the possibilities it proposes. I think appreciating the magic of reality, going from 'can't happen' to 'could happen,' is the fundamental appeal of science fiction.
My favorite movie is 'Closer' and 'Love Story.'
If I could sum up 'Shadow's Claim' in six words: cage fights with hot alpha males. Seriously, though, while the fights are the backdrop for Trehan and Bettina's love story, the main emphasis is on how Trehan - a pitiless master assassin - wages the ultimate battle to win her heart.
I have learned that I am not built for conflict or controversy. I have also learned that, in all my life, I have never chosen a story. The story has always chosen me.
