Jonathan Dee Quotes

In writing for movies, you obviously want to resolve things and have a sense of completion at the end - in an ideal way.

I feel like if you enjoyed the 119 hours that precede the finale of 'Lost,' is that whole experience ruined by the fact that you might not agree with everything that we did in the finale? I would hope not! I would hope that you would appreciate the fact that you were entertained for 119 hours even if you didn't love the finale.

There's this sense of excitement because you invent and control the characters. You decide whether they live or die. I find this type of creative process tremendously stimulating.

When you write a novel, you never have to be in the service of the reader. My only concern with my books is that the world that's created be as logical and whole as possible.

You have considerable choice in how you end your fiction. For all stories, the basic rule is the same: Choose the type of ending that best suits what's gone before.

As we began working toward the finale of 'Lost,' I knew there was no possible ending that was going to be universally loved, and I accepted that. We ended the story the way we wanted it to end, and we stand by it. On my Twitter feed, I still get ten to fifteen positive comments for every negative one.

The challenge is always to find the good place to end the book. The rule I follow with myself is that every book should end where the next book would logically begin. I know that some readers wish that literally all of the threads would be neatly tied off and snipped, but life just doesn't work that way.

Personally, I believe in fiction because the stories I like are those with a beginning and an end.

When you are a novelist, you are used to making a narrative do what you want.

I was very pleased with the way that the show ended creatively and personally. It just feels like we've completed the piece. And now to be able to step back a little bit and look at it from beginning to end, I feel good about the complete story that is 'Battlestar Galactica.'

It's a responsibility of the writer to get the reader out of the story somehow.

Yeah, I don't necessarily like endings that contrive an artificial moment of completion.

I'm writing for entertainment. I like people to reach the end and feel they got their money's worth.

I often find that writers who disavow the importance of an ending are just not very good at endings.

My characters - no, make that most characters - are seeking the shelter of narrative resolution, a place of quiet and grace.

With the finale episode of 'Gravity Falls' our job as storytellers is to finish all the things we've started.

Some of our best writers are self taught. Screenwriting is a combo of craft and art. The craft part can be taught, about how to be visual and economical with scenes. However, finally it's the individuality of the writer that will come into play.

I never want to co-write. People never just write a quarter of a book, do they? I don't think you can get your story across.

I'm good at description and imparting flow to a story, but I don't necessarily understand the value of long scenes.

I think the best endings bring you back in rather than close things off with absolute finality. I'm not saying they necessarily have to be ambiguous, but we don't always need to know what happens when everyone wakes up tomorrow morning.

Once the world has been created, the fantasy author still has to bring the story's characters to life and unfold a gripping plot. That's why good fantasy is such a hard act to bring off.

I will say there is only one caveat as far as 'Logan' goes: I got to the end and went, 'OK, what happens next?' To me, as an audience member, damn. If you can get to the end of the third act of a trilogy and your reaction is 'what the hell happens next,' someone did their job incredibly.

As a reader, I appreciate a world that feels unsettled and also visceral, inhabitable, so that's a quality I try and bring to my own work. In this way, dislocation and precision make total sense to me as a unit.

I get scripts and think, 'There's not enough here to get my teeth stuck into.' That's a result of studying English, where you luxuriate in these big, lush novels.

I'm becoming more of a novelist as I get older. The novel just seems the truer form. There's less artifice involved.