Gail Simone Quotes

It gets too easy to write from the point of view of a male character of my age, with the same cultural frame of reference.

I guess the characters I play may be at the more destructive edge of the spectrum, more damaged or whatever, but I find a lot of female roles uninteresting.

If I talk to a woman for more than five minutes I can tell you exactly whether she's an Aidan girl or a Mr. Big girl. Aidan girls are more interested in nurturing relationships and building a nest while Mr. Big girls are more about show and having fun.

We throw at female artists this expectation that their work has to speak to the female experience. And if it doesn't, you're letting the side down. Throwing this stumbling block in the way of female artists is counterintuitive.

I suppose it's easier for most writers to create and vivify characters of their own gender.

All male roles are written in a way where you just hide what's going on inside you, and all female roles are written in a way where they expose everything.

I always do a lot of work around characters to make them real people because, oftentimes, they really are a sliver of a person. Even with truly wonderful writers, women characters are there to emote, and they're often incredibly chaste or worthy. Or they're a 'different type of woman', which is the worst.

I get a stack of scripts, like, once a month, and most of the time, you find these placeholder girls that are there to provide a bounce for the male character. So we know he's funny because she's serious and she's mad at him. We know he's strong because she needs saving. So really, her job is to validate this personality trait of our hero or male.

In 'Boyz N the Hood,' every female character was three-dimensional.

I get the feeling that characters are written female when they have to be, and all the other characters are male, and it doesn't occur to somebody that the lawyer, the best friend, the landlord, whoever, can be female.

So often, in films, there are two ways a female can be portrayed: either innocent and virginal or the complete opposite.

So many times, you pick up a script, and you think, 'OK, so she's the sexy one,' or, 'She's the ex-girlfriend.'

I never set out to be the man who writes a lot of female characters.

That's my main complaint with Murakami: that he writes these complex males and then really static women.

I think all things are political... How women are portrayed - that's a big thing for me. What is this role trying to say about women? Is this woman weak or victimised, and, if so, do we get to understand why?

I always found growing up that, even inspiring female characters or complex female characters in TV and film... I often found that their complexity was actually just another facet of their sexuality.

I do see a lot of roles that are, like, the girlfriend or the love interest or the girl next door. Maybe not totally well-rounded kinds of characters - women who are more of a plot device in a way.

When men write women, they tend to write women the way they want women to be, or the way they resent women for being. They don't really - they seldom nail it. It takes a woman to write a really good female character. I like that.

I try not to blame the public, because the public - men, especially - have seen not great portrayals of women in supporting roles, because they're not given the lead roles a lot of the time. Especially in comedy, they're relegated to the adversary, which is like "the mean girlfriend."

I love the idea of directing, I'm not confident enough, but I'm more confident in, well, I'd love to write. I've sort of written my whole life and I think I have a knack for it, so I'd like to write something and see what people think and that would be my first step to directing.

I don't think there are that many parts I could say unequivocally "I would not play that," but there's lots of parts I read and I think, "I don't really want to do that. I don't really think that's how women act."

Once we realized that there were these 25 invariable types - the class politician, the frigid popular girl, the kid who tags along behind the jocks - once we came up with these key characters in a cloud of marijuana, the whole thing just came together. One of the things I'm really proud of is how much of a high-school yearbook it is in its look, so much so that Hunter Publishing had the art director, David Kaestle, and I come for years to their annual convention and do a little talk on how not to do a yearbook.

I feel like it's too easy to just say, "We'll just change the name of this male character to a female, but have her do all the same things that a male does." I don't believe in that. I think there's something else. I think there's more to women than that.

Outlines are the last resource of bad fiction writers who wish to God they were writing masters' theses.

Writing dialogue is like writing a song, which I've done.