Jed Mercurio Quotes

I think all interesting characters have some kind of a complex.

I enjoy pushing my characters to the limit. No matter how far out there I go, I look for things that make the characters human.

In the writers' room, when we talk about each episode, we first talk about the character journey of the episode.

There is more meat and mileage in complex characters, like 'Running with Scissors.'

I think conflicted characters are always more interesting.

Lucifer likes to have fun, but we need to make sure that he's also rooted in a proper journey. For the first few episodes after a pilot, you're just trying to establish your world and the starting points for your characters. But I feel like, as the stakes went up, the 'Lucifer' veneer got less and less.

I try to give both my heroes and villains an emotional dimensionality which provides the motivation for their actions.

I like taking a character at the most intense moments of their lives and exploring all that in full and then moving on.

The more intelligent the storytelling becomes and the deeper the character development, people will realize in film and television, like they do in real life, that human beings possess both good and bad.

I'm interested in telling the character's story, not my beliefs, political or otherwise.

At the heart of every story is conflict - whether external or internal, make it a good one, and remember that this problem is going to shape your character, leaving her forever changed.

The action genre is not always the most synonymous with character development.

In general, I think writing characters, no one is 100 percent good or bad, and certainly, the bad characters never think they're bad themselves. Even the worst characters don't feel like they're bad guys on the inside.

You'd be surprised how hard it is getting the human emotional arc in a script to work. Ultimately a director stands and falls by their ability to do that.

What's great about 'Game of Thrones' is they change the perspective, the POV, all the time. So you will have one story told by one character and you'll go, 'Oh my God, horrible', and then maybe the season after you have the same story told but from the person you thought was just the most horrible, vile creature.

Sometimes I know what my characters are moving away from or toward; more often I just wait and see. For instance, though I knew Sinkler in 'The Trusty' was going for water, I did not know that he would meet a fetching young farm wife until I got him into her front yard.

I think action should be revealed through character, so if you have a plot problem, it's probably a character problem.

Plot makes the character just as history makes the man.

Coming from TV and film, rule number one is that you always service the main character first and foremost. If that's not working, you've got nothing.

I think any character has to be well-rounded, whether they are male or female - they have to be complex and make choices that maybe we don't agree with, you know? I guess that's what makes them human.

You know, we have to take these characters - who, granted, have their separate personalities but, on a lot of levels, are pretty two-dimensional - and make them into people with flaws, with insecurities.

For me, one thing I love is having an arc for a character.

When your protagonist bores you, you're in trouble.

If you have great characters, then your reader becomes emotionally invested in those people.

I do not care about the length of my role. But it should make a difference to the story.