Ed Helms Quotes

Really good books need a chaos element: something weird or inexplicable.

I think the reason my stories have been so successful is that I have a strong sense of metaphor.

Marc Cherry is so good at writing himself into a corner, then writing himself out of that corner. It's really fun to watch that.

I'm trying my hand at writing. I'm writing a couple of projects for HBO, a half hour comedy and a miniseries.

There are a lot of good stories out there, but I haven't found too many great scripts.

I don't really have a drive toward being a director at all. Not that I wouldn't rule it out, but I just don't think my instincts lie necessarily in a very visual way. But I am very interested in storytelling, narrative and character development, so writing is something that I absolutely want to do.

Well, I must tell you I write the scripts very close to the bone. So I'm writing episode seven now and couldn't tell you what happens in episode eight.

I'm actually quite critical of the storytelling theme. I think all the storytellers are not storytellers.

Telling a story is like trying to eat grapes with a fork. It's always trying to get away from you. And if you're a good author, and you've challenged yourself, and you're telling big stories, there's more and more that's trying to get away from you simultaneously.

The things that I'm interested in directing are fiction, because then you're not married to a particular reality.

I was trained in storytelling by Jim Shooter, Stan Lee, and Larry Hama. Doesn't make me a genius, and there really isn't anything fancy about the stage direction in my scripts.

My main goal is to tell a story.

I wanted my first novel to be a veritable infarct of narrative cloggers-the trick being to feel your way through each clog by blowing it up until its obstructiveness finally reveals not blank mass but unlooked-for seepage points of passage.

In the planning stage of a book, don't plan the ending. It has to be earned by all that will go before it.

Anyone can write five people trapped in a snowstorm. The question is how you get them into the snowstorm. It's hard to write a good play because it's hard to structure a plot. If you can think of it off the top of your head, so can the audience. To think of a plot that is, as Aristotle says, surprising and yet inevitable, is a lot, lot, lot of work.

Plot is no more than footprints left in the snow after your characters have run by on their way to incredible destinations.

I don't think screenplay writing is the same as writing - I mean, I think it's blueprinting.

I just love fiction. I love it.

Every fiction has its base in fact.

The story sometimes writes you into a corner.

I love sentences. I love characters. But most of all, perhaps, I love to work on plot, and that may be where my natural gifts lie, if I have any. I like to think hard about plots in TV shows and films.

I think a little menace is fine to have in a story. For one thing, it's good for the circulation.

Well, we're meant to be writing stories today.

Do not start a story unless you have an ending in mind. You can change the story's ending if you wish, but you should always have a destination.

The story is the only thing that's important. Everything else will take care of itself. It's like what bowlers say. You hear writers talk about character or theme or mood or mode or tense or person. But bowlers say, if you make the spares, the strikes will take care of themselves. If you can tell a story, everything else becomes possible. But without story, nothing is possible, because nobody wants to hear about your sensitive characters if there's nothing happening in the story. And the same is true with mood. Story is the only thing that's important.