John Hawkes Quotes

In theatre, you learn the story is more important than the actor.

Fans want to see a story with characters, and they want to see a story.

Whenever you can manoeuvre your characters into a situation where they both have a good argument to make, you're on the right track.

In a story, you have to have a theme and an angle, you have to have a beginning, middle and an end. You have to have a defining moment and kick it to death. You gotta be able to recognize that, by the way. It probably takes experience.

A good opening and a good ending make for a good film provide they come close together.

We seek to craft characters who inspire empathy: characters our audience will care for and, as a result, will care about what happens to them and thus will share the journey we have charted. A story, after all, is the character's journey.

A structure is a bit like a story. People will go along with you - they see where you're going.

For the longest time, I was in random cold matches for 30 minutes and tore the house down for no reason, and everyone complained, 'Why isn't he in some kind of a story?'

If you're telling a story it's always best not to play the ending.

I'm all about the story. If I like the character and I think the story's entertaining, I'll do it.

In a lot of ways, TV writing taught me how to be a good storyteller. I learned about dialogue, scenes, moving the plot forward.

In each scene, the writer sets up a situation, which brings a conflict as well as either a small victory or a loss at the close of that particular scene.

I try mainly to just focus on character and what my character's point of view is, with each person, and try to figure out story.

As an actor, that's the best thing you can do, really take people along on a story and tell them something.

Some novels present a story form many points of view. Most movies tell only one person's side of the story. Sometime it's easy to use the strongest point of view, or find the character with the most dramatic experience. It depends on which themes the scriptwriter wants to explore.

I'm still really fascinated with characters and people and telling their stories.

You can have the greatest characters in the world and write beautifully, but if nothing's happening, the story falls on its face pretty quickly.

Everything you write makes you better. But if you really need a tip, here's one: a good story begins in opposition to its ending. That means you work out how it finishes first, and then begin the story as far away from that point - in terms of character development - as you can.

The story drove the book. That had a very seminal effect on the way I saw writing and storytelling. If you can set a character in a story that is compelling and has a backbone, you draw people in.

The fundamentals for me are character and conflict. I put character first because readers will be indifferent to conflict if they are indifferent to the character who is experiencing it.

A story isn't interesting unless a character has real challenges to deal with.

Creating authentic emotional experiences, whether it's 'Star Wars' or 'Spotlight,' are driven by characters and stories that are engaging.

My only conclusion about structure is that nothing works if you don't have interesting characters and a good story to tell.

For me, any story I tackle begins with the human relationships and not the plot.

I think it's always good not to listen to what the rules are supposed to be about the arc of the character and the third acts and all this stuff.