There have been days where I've had two writers' rooms or three writers' rooms going, and you walk back and forth. And then you sort of throw yourself on the sofa, and you go, 'Just talk at me for, like, 20 minutes,' and my brain will catch up with this particular story. But I find that exciting.
'Zorn' goes to some pretty ridiculous places, but the real comedy is coming from these little observations about life that are not as outlandish as some of the bigger moves in the story. This is a guy who has magical relics and fights weird monsters and is also dealing with very basic work and family things.
The end of a story must be stronger rather than weaker than the beginning, since it is the end which contains the denouement or culmination and which will leave the strongest impression upon the reader.
Around 2005, the Canadian army tapped me to do a dramatization for a series of foresight workshops they'd done. They had stacks of papers and needed it boiled down to something simple enough for a 4-star general to understand. We decided to do it as a story. That's how I created 'Crisis in Zefra.'
Covers are always so fun to do, but there's nothing like telling your own story.
I believe that India's long-term growth story is strong, and foreign investors are keen to be a part of it.
I sent The World Well Lost to one editor who rejected it on sight, and then wrote a letter to every other editor in the field warning them against the story, and urging them to reject it on sight without reading it.
When I was around 12 or so, I saw 'The Shining.' I just remember that being a turning point for me, where I started to think about the fact that there was a hand behind the film. That it wasn't just this magical story being told - there were actual people crafting these films, and they were works of art.
Everyone can relate to the story of fighting for happiness.
Who were the fools who spread the story that brute force cannot kill ideas? Nothing is easier. And once they are dead they are no more than corpses.
The genius of a folk melody or story is not the feeling that it's original but quite the opposite - the feeling that it has existed all along.
I like dialogue in novels. I wanted to avoid laying history on with a trowel - appearing to be lecturing, as opposed to the characters lecturing their children or students. Dialogue can humanise the story and make it go down somewhat more smoothly.
I write in expectation that readers want to participate in a kind of two-sided game: They are trying to guess what I am up to - what the story's up to - and I'm giving them clues and matter to keep them interested without giving everything away at the start. Even the rules, if any, of the game are for the reader to discover.
You can't write an image, a metaphor, a story, a phrase, without leaning a little further into the shared world, without recognizing that your supposed solitude is at every point of its perimeter touching some other.
I sometimes say that I don't make anything up - obviously that's not true. But I am uninterested in writers who say that everything comes out of the imagination. I would rather be in a room with someone who is telling the story of his life, which may be exaggerated and even have lies in it, but I want to hear the true story, essentially.
I love when stories have something a little magical in them, and there's wonder and curiosity. Somewhere there are people living these improbable stories, and our job is to go out and find them and bring them to the page. And so, the more surprising, the more uplifting, the more sort of even inspiring a story is, I find myself gripped by those.
I used to tell my three younger siblings stories because that was my household chore, and I told long stories in installments because it was easier and more fun than making up a new story every night. I loved it.
The medium is less important than the story we're trying to tell and the funniest way to tell it.
For my type of story and my kind of writing, I think 'Vanity Fair' is the right forum.
I still like to play games that have a beginning, an end and a story.
It was a strange experience, making a love story and not getting along with your co-star in any way.
If one story becomes too hot, then you can't forget it. As an actor, you want to remain fluid.
It all goes back to 'Wow, I never knew this about Marco Polo.' This is an incredible story and an incredible character, and such a rich world of Mongolian and Chinese culture.
We're at maybe 1% of what is possible. Despite the faster change, we're still moving slow relative to the opportunities we have. I think a lot of that is because of the negativity... Every story I read is Google vs someone else. That's boring. We should be focusing on building the things that don't exist.
Bram Stoker's 'Dracula' was a story about the fear of immigration; the bad old bloodsucker swooping in from Eastern Europe and also preying upon 'our' vulnerable women.
I decided to write Westerns because there was a terrific market for Westerns in the '50s. There were a lot of pulp magazines, like 'Dime Western' and '10 Story Western' that were still being published. The better ones paid two cents a word. And I thought, 'I like Westerns.'
We want to help everyone find meaning in their life and help translate the story that each person actually matters in the world.
There are not two sides to a story when one side is a lie. Journalists - and the rest of us - must stop giving equal time to things that don't have an opposing side.
I like to be involved with the scriptwriter early on, helping shape the story, and working out how the story can be told directorially.
I think it's more interesting to throw people into a story and let them catch up instead of explaining and feeling like you have to slow down for them. I think audiences, for the most part, they don't want to be ahead of you.
Look at the films of Walt Disney: 'Snow White' came out in February 1938, and I can't think of another film from that year that's watched as much. The same is true of 'Bambi,' 'Dumbo'... even, frankly, 'Toy Story,' which is probably watched more than any other movie of 1995.
Hope is a contraband passed from hand to hand and story to story.
Reading asks that you bring your whole life experience and your ability to decode the written word and your creative imagination to the page and be a co-author with the writer, because the story is just squiggles on the page unless you have a reader.
It's amazing what you can do without in terms of filmmaking when a story is really important.
'The 100' gave me this platform I never expected. I didn't expect the character to become anything. I was originally only signed up to do six episodes, and then it just sort of become this whole story and journey, which was an amazing character, a great journey, so that has been incredible, and I didn't expect anything out of it.
There's good movies and there's bad movies. The genres are never dead, it's just about how to apply them and articulate them and execute them - the story, the quality of the writing, the acting, the design elements, the directorial execution - all these things make it what it is.
