Alexandre Aja Quotes

I feel that in horror movies, especially, if you don't care about the characters, you've lost the audience. No one cares, and it becomes a process of watching people get killed.

The closer a horror story gets to the truth of things, the more affective it is going to be.

It doesn't matter whether characters are real people or not; if they're not vivid on the page, then the reader doesn't care about them that much, and, if the reader doesn't care about them that much, then they don't care what happens to them.

Most gothics are overplotted novels whose success or failure hinges on the author's ability to make you believe in the characters and partake of the mood.

I think all great comedies - or at least the comedies I like - it has some of the funniest moments, but it never breaks the spell for the audience. It never pushes the audience away by spoofing itself too much or undermining the characters or making them cardboard or flimsy. Everybody is really trying to do what their characters believe in - and so nobody breaks the spell of the world, even though in other ways it's a comedy and very funny.

In a great horror movie, you've gotta have some character development and you've gotta set some of your people up and you've gotta have a little back story going. You've gotta take that time for exposition.

All actors have to believe that our characters have a point that makes sense. Hopefully, they make sense to the crowd watching it, but at least he has to make sense in his own mind, in his own universe.

Casting is so important, with any film you do. You have to get actors that you believe will fulfill the promise of the characters that are on the page.

I think once those friendships, if you use that as an analogy, the friendships between the audience and the character is established, then you can start to take liberties. I believe that as this unfolds people will find the time invested worthwhile.

Some TV shows are like really good novels in that there are enough episodes that you start to have your own feelings about how the characters should act. When the scriptwriters go slightly wrong, when they make the character make a left turn that he or she wouldn't do, you know enough about the characters to say, "No, that's not what she would do there. That's wrong." You can actually argue with a TV show in a way that you can't do as much with movie - you inhabit a TV show in the way you inhabit a novel.

I write - and read - for the sake of the story... My basic test for any story is: 'Would I want to meet these characters and observe these events in real life? Is this story an experience worth living through for its own sake? Is the pleasure of contemplating these characters an end itself?

I don't think about the stories so much, as the characters themselves. They live on, and they are almost as real as I am.

When I'm writing, I don't put faces on the characters. When I finish the first draft of the script, I start visualizing, and sometimes then I think about one actor.

I got very lucky to work with Wes Craven, very early on in my career, and continued to work with Wes for almost 19 years. I learned so much from him, and about his sense of story and his sense of horror, and that was great to be a part of.

Once you're involved in the work, it's really just you and the characters and the words.

I pride myself on doing character-driven movies and, when my movies have worked, it's been because of the right casting and the right character, and it just clicks.

You kind of worry for the characters in a way that you don't normally in sci-fi, because sci-fi tends to be about the ideas, and this is about people.

Writing fiction means putting a lot of what you believe about the world at risk, because you have to follow your characters.

One believes in Stephen Dedalus as one believes in few characters in fiction.

I really do believe that people surprise you. And one of the powerful things about novels is that they're about characters, and those characters live their lives.

A house built on granite and strong foundations, not even the onslaught of pouring rain, gushing torrents and strong winds will be able to pull down. Some people have written the story of my life representing as truth what in fact derives from ignorance, error or envy; but they cannot shake the truth from its place, even if they attempt to make others believe it.

When you read a fantasy novel part of the fun is getting to explore a new world. Everyone knows that. But I believe the same is true about characters. You can explore interesting people in the same way that you explore a town or a culture.

It's not as if the stories merge to a point where you think they are your life, but you do let them in the front door and the back door, and it's okay that sometimes certain characters stay for dinner.

The love and support from the Witches of East End fans continues to blow us away and renews our faith that storytelling matters, strong female characters matter, and messages about faith and hope matter. I love this family. I love this story. And to be part of a show that has inspired and touched so many people's hearts is a true blessing.

One of the keys is, and it may sound funny, talking about characters with super powers, but one of the keys is to make your characters as realistic and believable as possible. Even if they have super powers, you say to yourself, "Well, if somebody had a super power like this, what would his life be like? Wouldn't he still maybe have to go to the dentist or wouldn't he have to worry about making a living? What about his love life?" You've got to make characters that your reader can believe exists or might exist.