Howard Hawks Quotes

I've always loved shows that combine both approaches - that have a mythology and a set of characters, whose stories develop and change, and where the relationships evolve and fracture.

I would say plotting is the most difficult thing for me. Characterization is only hard because sometimes I feel I get so interested in it that I want to talk too much about the characters and that slows the story down. So I say, "Hey, people want to find out what's going to happen next, they don't want to listen to you spout off about this or that person." But I think even the bad guy deserves to tell his side of the story.

A two-hour movie tends to be a plot-delivery device; you tend to have to introduce all the characters, say what the goal is, and then get there with a setback, but that's not really how life is or what a story necessarily wants to be.

Typically with HBO shows, the ninth episode often winds up being a big one and when lots of exciting stuff happens. And then the tenth one is the more placid, character-based one.

You have to think about good storytelling and characters first. Then hopefully, the rest of that stuff will follow, some more than others. But if you don't have a good film and strong characters, then you don't have anything down the road.

With a film, things constantly have to go up in the story, and you're constantly putting pressure on the main character. It allows to go really deep into what its relationship is.

One of the great things about TV is the story to tell can be very internal and really character-based.

As a writer you see the big picture and how you can tell as one character, how your storyline is going to meet up with all these other storylines. And as an actor you're thinking of all the minutiae, all the very small details.

I think writers have become hypnotised by the number of jokes on the page at the expense of character.

The story is always in service to the characters, and is only as long or short, or neat or ragged as it needs to be.

Characters develop as the book progresses, but any that start to bore me end up in the wastepaper basket. In real life, we may have to put up with tedious people, but not in novels.

Certainly it's very difficult to keep momentum going through a film which has as many characters as this does, and the piece took on a life of its own to try and shape it. That took all the time we had in editing.

The scene is never really about moving the story forward on 'Breaking Bad.' That's the functional veneer of the scene, but it's always about what's going on with the characters.

The emotions of the actors are better when they understand the chronological factors that are adding to the story.

For me, any story I tackle begins with the human relationships and not the plot.

My characters are not thinking about the act breaks. They're thinking about what they need to do to move forward. As long as I focus on that, the story starts to progress. As soon as I think, 'We're 20 pages in, something better blow up,' we're in trouble.

When a show starts out, you're immediately trying to identify your goodies and baddies, and trying to place people in your mind where you think they belong.

I don't really think in terms of genre, I think in terms of story and character.

Being a director it's mean - digging deep in yourself as well. I think the deeper I understood the material and the script and the themes and the characters, I felt the more confident I was and the more I could bring to the movie. So I was lucky to have my actors because they were right there with me in the deep end.

Character is plot, plot is character.

Whatever character you play, remember they are always doing something they are not just talking.

My love is to tell a story but I like stories that evolve from character, from the nature of the individuals involved.

There's something in psychology called the narrative paradigm, which essentially means that we think of our lives as stories in which we are the main characters.

Chris Claremont once said of Alan Moore, "if he could plot, we'd all have to get together and kill him." Which utterly misses the most compelling part of Alan's writing, the way he develops and expresses ideas and character. Plot does not define story. Plot is the framework within which ideas are explored and personalities and relationships are unfolded.

I think ultimately that's why the audience will tune in longterm, for the characters and the relationships.