Marc Guggenheim Quotes

I never let the technical stuff get in the way of the storytelling.

This is absolutely the true answer, no word of a lie, 100% guaranteed: Q: What's the best way to turn my idea into a story? A: Whatever works for you.

Good scripts and interesting stories are hard enough to find.

I have the 'thing' worked out - the trick or the surprise or the pivotal fact. Then I just start somewhere and let the story work itself out.

If the script is telling the story well, that is your inspiration, and you do not need to go somewhere else.

I've always found the script to be more of a skeleton, the template.

All the writing elements are the same. You need to tell a good story... You've got good characters... People think there's some dramatic difference between writing 'Little Bear' and the 'Hunger Games,' and as a writer, for me, there isn't.

There are many ways to go about a story. And if you give yourself some formal constraints, it just makes the job so much - maybe 'easier' isn't the right word, but because you know your boundaries, you can just play within those boundaries much more, so it's much more fun to do.

You just write about things that happen.

I think it's a short story writer's duty, as well as writing well about emotions and characters, to write story.

A good story cannot be devised; it has to be distilled.

I get the beginning. I get the end. Then I write the middle. That's how I do it.

One of the biggest mistakes people make is to think that what you need to write a novel is imagination, creativity and a facility with words. Yes, you need all those things, but a novel is a highly complex organism that needs to be dealt with in quite a logical manner.

There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.

I'm just trying to tell a nice story. Whether you're a writer or a producer, all you want to do is tell a good yarn.

That's one of those things that will really hurt me personally, if I label a character or think about what it might do if it were to do well. I just try to do a good job with it.

My job is to help my father tell stories.

I had never written anything. And I had never studied writing. So my motives were pure: I had a great story... a courtroom drama that I sort of fictionalized, and that became 'A Time to Kill.'

For each book, there's a back story of where the idea came from. Sometimes it's derived from a current event or topic of discussion, such as 'Deadline.'

No matter what strategies you make, if you don't get the right script, everything is going to go down.

For someone who wants to write a story, they should go on thinking about the story. When it comes up to a level, where it has reached your neck that's when you should go about writing it.

You don't idea your way into a plot but plot your way into an idea.

When I am writing fiction, I believe I am much better organized, more methodical - one has to be when writing a novel. Writing poetry is a state of free float.

The first lie of fiction is that the author gives some order to the chaos of life: chronological order, or whatever order the author chooses.

Obviously, I love to do both contemporary and historical fiction. When a hint of a story grabs me, I try to go with it to see where it will take me whatever the setting.