Tom Peters Quotes

This was a really big opportunity. This script was even mediocre. The idea was great, but Jay came on with his guys made it great and very specific. It all came together well.

Ever since my first film, I had more producers than scripts. And I've realised that a certain project requires a certain kind of producer for it to be made well.

The process of writing a novel is like taking a journey by boat. You have to continually set yourself on course. If you get distracted or allow yourself to drift, you will never make it to the destination. It's not like highly defined train tracks or a highway; this is a path that you are creating discovering. The journey is your narrative. Keep to it and there will be a tale told.

Larger game teams are often a bit more experienced at working with writers, which is often a huge relief. However, it also means that there are more people wanting to wander around the narrative kitchen telling you how you should be making your story pies.

A great trick that I learned having worked as a screenwriter for many years, the way screenwriters work, is they break the project down into three-act structure: Act 1, Act 2, Act 3. I think that is a great way to break down any project, whether it's a new business or anything at all.

A story is like something you wind out of yourself. Like a spider, it is a web you weave, and you love your story like a child.

When I am in the process of conceiving a story, I make sure it can be told with words and pictures. The story has to be creative, original and interesting in both areas. Many stories get rejected because they feel derivative.

Any fool can tell a story. Take a few odds and ends of things that happen to you, dress them up, shuffle them about, add a dash of excitement, a little color, and there you have it.

Everything in the world was about creativity: belief and creation. Storytelling was the essence of both.

I prefer things that are private, so I love recording and I love making films, as a filmmaker, because it uses every bit of what you have experienced or know, whether it's graphics composition, decorating, psychology, storytelling, or whatever it is. It's a wonderful thing.

At the end of the day, it's all one version of telling a story. I treated this as if it was a two million dollar independent film. I did a lot more physical work than I'd probably have to do for a two million dollar independent film with four months of training and stuff. But as far as the character's psychology or emotional life goes, I treat it just the same.

Making a movie is casting a spell.

What I ended up doing was kind of crafting an idea for a story, presenting it to a writer - a dear friend of mine, Brad Mirman - and he ended up writing a beautiful script. I should've done that a lot earlier.

Everyone's taste is different. But I think the best way to defend against regrets after opening night is to try your best to tell the story you want to tell. In terms of smaller changes over time, I think good plays are like poems. Every syllable counts.

It's not so much that I enjoy screenwriting, though mostly I do, but the difference is, with adaptations, somebody else has done the hard part - made up a story, provided the characters.

Good storytelling for me is not so much technical expertise, which I know is applauded often; it's actually freshness of approach. It does mean you sometimes stumble and fall and make a horrible mess of things in seeking that freshness, but you should always keep trying to do that.

To me, there are lots of different stories to tell and you usually find the best way to tell the one you are telling once you are in it.

If it turns out that we're doing proper science from time to time, it just happens to be that that's the most efficient way of doing it. We go into each of these stories with an open mind, and one of the great things about how the show works is that we're not approaching it from a doctoral point of view, we're just trying to see what happens.

In movies, storytelling and every single art form, we're creating wonder. You're starting with a blank page and creating something that doesn't exist.

I think that the way that I write stories is by instinct. You have some basic ideas - a character, or an image, or a situation that sounds compelling - and then you just feel your way around until you find the edges of your story. It's like going into a dark room... you stumble around until you find the walls and then inch your way to the light switch.

The script comes first. If that isn't good enough, you know it's gonna be a long ride.

I stopped reading William Faulkner because it's hard work. I want to read a good writer, but I also want to read something where the pages are going to move along. That's what I want. It doesn't have to be a thriller or a mystery. Just something where I get caught up in the story.

I look at albums like novels. If you write a really good scene or a really good moment, just because you wrote it, doesn't mean that it fits with the story that you're writing.

If you want to make a documentary you should automatically go to the fiction, and if you want to nourish your fiction you have to come back to reality.

what storyteller is adequate to her story? The story carries us along, bottles on the tide, each with our secret mesage and the fervent hope that it does not turn out to be blank.