Marti Noxon Quotes

'The Piano Lesson' is very sophisticated, easily the most adult or complex material I've attempted. It's the first film I've written that has a proper story, and it was a big struggle for me to write. It meant I had to admit the power of narrative.

I get so excited about reading a new script.

I'm just a sucker for a good script.

I advise all my novel students to write in the company of 'Veronica Mars.'

I didn't plan to write YA - I had a story that simply wasn't working as a straight-up fantasy novel.

'Seize the Story' takes readers all the way through the process of writing fiction, from beginning to end. Every element, from dialogue to setting, plotting to character creation, is laid out and illustrated with examples. But the tone of the book is not that of a dry writing manual - it's definitely written for teenagers.

One of the challenges is creating characters. I am trying to compose my sentences to express epic events happening to ordinary people.

I work in a dramatic context, meaning we write with a lot of character specifics, a lot of story specifics. There's a lot of architecture in our songs.

One of the horribly frustrating things about writing feature films is the rules everyone applies and says, 'You have to do this by the end of the first act and by the end of the second act you must introduce this.' As if there were rules to life or telling a story or the ways things happen, which of course there aren't.

In the 'Buffy' room, it was never about a plot twist, ever. It was always about, 'Tell the story, tell the characters, complicate their lives, make things get worse,' but we never worked backwards from the plot, and it was always a great lesson.

I plot the first 5 or 6 chapters quite minutely, and also the end. So I know where I am going but not how I'm going to get there, which gives characters the chance to develop organically, as happens in real life as you get to know a person.

A good script makes our job a lot easier.

I'm mostly a novelist these days, but I have written short stories in Fantasy, Science Fiction and horror.

Having written for film and television, I had little interest in turning 'The Good Father' into a Hollywood thriller. I was writing a novel, and novels demand that the writer goes deeper, both emotionally and thematically.

I never really approach any project or story thinking of themes first or what a certain character 'represents.' Maybe other writers do, but for me, it just starts with the characters and a certain emotion I want to convey. It usually isn't until I get deeper into a book and look back a bit that I start to see the themes, etc.

If I ever wrote a script myself, it would be strongly emotional material.

I am not an analytical writer. Once I flesh out my characters and decide on the elements of my plot, the story unfolds in my head almost as though it was a movie reel.

I'm consistently blown away by 'Mad Men.' Having spent so much time in the writers' room, I'm cursed in that anytime I watch something, I'm always calculating what the writers are up to.

When I first read the script a few years ago I thought it was one of the best written scripts I had ever read.

Writing a TV show is totally different than writing features, or just, what I started doing is writing features. You write a little bit more organically. You start from the beginning to the end, beginning, middle and end.

I'm writing exactly the kinds of books I like to write. And they're the kinds of books I like to read. They're popular commercial fiction. That's what they are.

Only in very rare circumstances will you see something cut out of my first drafts. Maybe it's because of the way I write. I'm very focused on the logical progression of the story, and every character has a role to play.

The first sentence of every novel should be: Trust me, this will take time but there is order here, very faint, very human. Meander if you want to get to town.

I love writing letters. In order to write a novel in first person, I think I needed an addressee.

For 'Breaking Bad,' it was like, that's one of the best pilots, probably the best pilot I have ever read.