JULIE PLEC

I watched a lot of soap operas, when I was growing up, and a lot of those great serialized soap dramas.

I've always loved the genre of virus movies or Armageddon movies - anything that involves being trapped with the cute boy in detention when the zombies are attacking.

TV is really, really, really hard work. You sacrifice a lot of your personal life, a lot of your sanity, just to do one show.

We have a rule: if you're killing off a series regular, you have to tell them first. If you're killing off a person temporarily, you have to warn them before the script comes out.

You're supposed to be writing from experience - experience with people, with reading, seeing some homeless guy on the street and making up some story of him in your head. If you never see any of that or have those conversations or even sleep enough to have vivid dreams, then what are you writing about?

Humanity has both its beautiful and its ugly sides.

You can love and hate your family with equal measure, but the power of the bond you have to have with them, you can't really ever walk away.

TV writing - for me, at least - is half original voice and half an embodiment and a representation of the spirit of the actors you're writing for.

I thought, 'Oh, I'll be an independent producer. Oh, I'll be a manager.' I was going through all those things in my head, and one night, late at night, I was having what I would now describe as probably a panic attack because there were so many unknowns. An almost literal voice came into my head telling me, 'You need to write.'

When you have an ensemble where characters pair off so easily, it becomes extremely isolating in the story world. You can end up with two actors who have not seen each other face to face all season long.

I learned more about who I am and how to be a great worker - and a great artistic worker - from doing student theater. I was a stage manager. I was an assistant stage manager. I was on the running crew. I did probably 25 shows at Northwestern - all musicals, of course.

Kevin Williamson and I wrote a show about loss and grief that just so happened to have vampires in it.

Cynicism doesn't have its way in series finales. My emotional desire when I watch a series come to an end is to be crying and laughing and cheering as the final credits roll, feeling like I just got delivered the happy ending, whether the plot ends happily or not.

If people love 'TVD' in 20 years the way they still love 'Buffy' today - on its 20th anniversary - I will be happy.

Showrunning is an arrogant job. You have to be arrogant and hold yourself strong in order for people to hear you. Confidence partners with arrogance. The only person you have to trust is yourself. The only instinct you can trust is your own.

I think, make it as beautiful as you can, and then rip it away. That's my sadistic thought as a storyteller.

I call it 'The Breakfast Club' philosophy. There's something about being trapped in a dire situation with a group of people that you would never normally be trapped with.

When you're telling taut, tight storytelling that has any kind of built-in plot twist elements, you tend to want to stack everything up on top of itself as opposed to letting things breathe and be languid in terms of the passage of time.

I look at 'Friday Night Lights' as one of my all-time favorite series finales, and that is what you want. After all the roads you've traveled with these people, you just want to know that they're going to be happy. I'm a big believer in shows that make that choice.

When you're the showrunner, you're the person that's in control of most of the details, and to be able to take all that and then to step right behind the camera and to have a direct line of communication with the crew and with the actors - to not be delivering that through another person - is pretty freeing and extremely stimulating.

The people I worked for before I was doing 'Vampire Diaries' were very generous to me.

I wanted to work in Hollywood. I was captivated by it. I read 'Premiere Magazine' and 'Movieline Magazine' and 'Us' before it was a weekly magazine.

I didn't get paid to write professionally until my first episode of 'Kyle XY,' which was the fourth episode of the first season.

Fans are always talking about endgame as though endgame has been chosen from minute 1. I don't know that you could talk to a single series creator that would say confidently 'Where I started is where I finished, and there was no way in hell I was going to stray from that path.' 'Dawson's' being the perfect example.

When you're dealing with long-distance relationships, it's a relationship played out over technology. When you're in high school, it's because you're not supposed to act on those impulses yet. So some of my favorite relationships in drama are based in people that can't really be together.