A great book provides escapism for me. The artistry and the creativity in a story are better than any drugs.
Of course, I'm drawn to a place like Iraq because It's the biggest story of our generation.
I don't mind UFO's and ghost stories, it's just that I tend to give value to the storyteller rather than to the story itself.
When you have an idea for a story, you want those characters to reach as many people as you can. I think you normally think of prose as a way of doing that. It fits our time, the culture.
It was 1981. I was working on a novel. And I put that novel aside one day after I read a newspaper article. The story said there were 19 women still on the pension payroll who were Confederate war widows. They were women who very early in their lives had married very old men.
If you have an embarrassing story, and it's a source of shame, keeping it in just compounds the shame and turns the story into something poisonous. And if someone knows about it, then it can be used against you.
'Junkhearts' is a great story.
Let's be clear - for people like me, who are obsessed with story and for whom words are their medium, writing is the best job possible. I work hard, but I earn more than the national average wage while I play with my imagination, and for me, that's a dream.
And, of course, supernatural elements just make a story more interesting.
Writing is truly a creative art - putting word to a blank piece of paper and ending up with a full-fledged story rife with character and plot.
The whole Haley-Nathan marriage deal was a pretty good twist huh? I hope we got all of you with it. That particular story line even suprised me when I read it, it's a good one and it'll provide for some good stories to come.
I like Nirvana, but I couldn't say that I was influenced by them. I like to tell a story.
'West Side Story' I used to watch all the time - I don't know why. Well, I do - it's a great movie. I love the music in it. I love the actors.
It's also possible to have two third person singular points of view, as represented by two characters through whose eyes the story is told in alternating chapters, say.
I couldn't have known 'Crank' was going to be published, let alone become a big hit. That book was very personal for me: I had to tell the story for myself.
Since I've had some success, story and character are always the two elements I think about first in material presented to me. Some of my choices have been more successful than others.
I think the thing's that perhaps sad really is that younger people haven't come in and I think it must have been absolutely fantastic to have worked in the 50's when you had all of the great Broadway composers and when West Side Story didn't win the Tony Award.
Writing 'Men We Reaped' broke me in different ways at different spots in the drafting process. The first draft was hard because I was just getting it out. In some ways, that draft failed. I was really just telling the story, not making assessments - this happened, then this. Just putting those facts down on paper was really painful.
I felt vulnerable and very much between friends. I remember walking down the hallway and thinking I had no way of knowing what was coming, literally. This wasn't because I had some horrific bullying story, but because of a steady drip of negativity.
I didn't act like I was there. I just got into the story.
I like to watch many things, especially strange films and something recent, not just the story.
The second draft is on yellow paper, that's when I work on characterizations. The third is pink, I work on story motivations. Then blue, that's where I cut, cut, cut.
The silence was part of the story I wanted to tell.
The O. Henry has become lingua franca among writers for saying, 'That guy can write a story.' It's prestigious, respected, coveted, dreamed about. It's very satisfying to be included in this group of writers. Here's a koan: Could O. Henry win an O. Henry?
'Behind The Candelabra' is an HBO movie. It's the Liberace story. Michael Douglass and Matt Damon. I play a small part in it. I play a choreographer who introduces, brings Matt Damon to Las Vegas for the first time.
It was definitely a part of our life. I mean, my mom had both her brothers and her fiancee in Vietnam at the same time, so it wasn't just my dad's story, it was my mom's story too. And we definitely grew up listening to the stories.
Every coal miner I talked to had, in his history, at least one story of a cave-in. 'Yeah, he got covered up,' is a way coal miners refer to fathers and brothers and sons who got buried alive.
Every field piece I did on 'The Daily Show' was a story that lasted five to six minutes. We had a protagonist, we had an antagonist and often put them at odds. We knew the story we wanted to tell before we went in, and often it was about plugging whatever character you have - in this case, a real person - into said part.
As a filmmaker, I'm very collaborative. I don't pretend to know everything that is needed to make a movie. What I like to do is get together with a group of people, starting with developing the story and bounce around ideas.
I think all artists have a different story to tell, and no story is the same.
Supporting characters add depth to a story, and great actors leave their imprint with the audience.
A romance is a courtship story. In the 19th century, the definition of the romance genre was an escape from daily life that included adventure and love and battle. But in the 20th century, that term changed, and now it's deemed only a love story, specifically a courtship story.
Never look for the story in the 'lede.' Reporters are required to put what's happened up top, but the practiced pundit places a nugget of news, even a startling insight, halfway down the column, directed at the politiscenti. When pressed for time, the savvy reader starts there.
The second song is called 'Easy As Life,' which really describes the complete conflict of the whole story, her struggle of being in love with the enemy and also being in love with her people.
Sometimes I just think that there are more things to be said to make the audience understand what I'm trying to do more. When I'm singing, I don't want you to just hear the melody. I want you to relive the story, because most of the songs have pretty good storytelling.
I still write the occasional short story, and poked at a novel once, but it's just not what I want to do.
