Benjamin Percy Quotes

I think I would like to write screenplays, books, really anything.

It takes me two to three years to write a novel. A screenplay is 100 pages and takes five years.

I would say, A, you can't really teach anyone how to write good characters, because it's something you have to teach yourself or already have innately in you as a storyteller, and, B, coming up with a good screenplay is a very, very small fraction of what it takes to be a good screenwriter.

I started writing when I was 26, so I don't even know what year that was. I wrote a script for me to star in. A friend of mine, who was an actor that I would compete against a lot, had written a script and was taking all these meetings. He just kept pushing me and was like, "You got to do it. You're going to love it!" He's a very successful screenwriter now. His name is Michael Bacall and he wrote 21 Jump Street, Project X, and Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. So it was a few factors.

Whether I'm in front of the camera, behind the camera, at my computer writing a novel or a screenplay, as long as I get to entertain someone out there, I'm happy.

I'm not writing novels, the screenplays are my novels, so I'm gonna write it the best that I can. If the movie never gets made, it'd almost be okay because I did it. It's there on the page.

The elegance of a really good screenplay, I admire it. I can't do it.

I found the structure of writing a screenplay harder than the structure of writing an essay. But it was definitely challenging to force myself to sit and write. I'm not used to having to force myself to work.

I like to begin every screenplay with a burst of delusional self-confidence. It tends to fade pretty quickly, but (for me, at least) there doesn't seem to be any other way to start writing a script.

I just finished a novel, and I'm back kind of noodling on the screenplays. Screenplays are tough. I am making music, I'm just not sure what kind of music it is or where it's going.

I think the reason I wrote screenplays for nearly a decade was because it was my territory. I could stake that out.

I look forward to every script that comes down the pike.

I didn't write 'Snow White' for any class, but I got bitten by the screenwriting bug and wrote a couple of scripts in my spare time instead of going to keg parties or something.

I started writing because I wanted to write scripts, but I wasn't very good at it. Then I started writing short stories, sort of as treatments for the film scripts, and I found I enjoyed writing short stories far more than I enjoyed writing film scripts. Then the short stories got longer and longer and suddenly, I had novels.

When I was in advertising, I did a great deal of work on television commercials. A co-worker and I wrote a screenplay, which led to a few more screenplays, and some were optioned by production companies. I was advised to move to California but didn't want to make the move. I decided to use another form of storytelling, so I wrote a novel.

When I write a screenplay - and I think this is true for a lot of people - you direct the movie. That's what writing a screenplay is.

Screenwriting is a much more collaborative effort. When you write a novel, it's just you, with input from your editor.

The hardest single thing you do is get the bloody screenplay right.

I love to write. I write everything across the board - kids' stories and novels and scripts. I actually would like to give that a go; I'd like to try to be a writer.

I love film and have taken a stab at a screenplay. I love writing dialogue and found it highly enjoyable.

When you write a movie, you have a hundred collaborators. But when you write a novel, it's yours.

I feel a bigger sense of fulfillment when writing a novel, and short stories are more about instant gratification.

The most amazing gift about being a novelist is that you get to pursue your curiosity every day.

I'm a very slow screenwriter. It takes time for me to write a screenplay. Also, I feel it's not my strength.

Writing a screenplay is so spare, it kind of reminded me that I really should celebrate what I can do in a book, which is description: for example, places, people, locations.