Edward Zwick Quotes

Here's what happens in a play. You get involved in a situation where something is unbalanced. If nothing's unbalanced, there's no reason to have a play. If Hamlet comes home from school, and his dad's not dead and asks him if he's had a good time, it's boring. But if something's unbalanced, it must be returned to order.

Good stories are driven by conflict, tension, and high stakes.

The way I view drama is life with the boring bits taken out.

We like drama. Even in our comedy, we like drama.

If you have a beautiful story, it has to have conflict. If you don't have conflict, it can't be a good story.

Tension is the cornerstone of any good story.

I think that internal conflict works very well, because, after all, all the best drama is fuelled by conflict.

With any good story, you need the adversary, the heroes and villains. You need a good mixture to make it work.

The essence to me of all good drama is argument.

Stories work better when not everyone gets what they want.

What resonates with me whenever I watch a great movie or TV show is the balance of inevitability and unpredictability. And it's a very delicate balance.

What's interesting to me is drama and conflict. Things aren't interesting without conflict and resolution of conflict - or striving towards a resolutions of conflict.

Good drama must be drastic.

Judgments and secrets are what make a good novel.

I believe that the writer should tell a story. I believe in plot. I believe in creating characters and suspense.

I can be so blown away by story lines.

Listen to great storytellers; slowly, you will learn about voice, timing, tension, structure, climax - all the things you need to tell stories that will capture the imagination of your audience.

You have to go to the ultimate situation in drama.

I love a really good storyline.

Drama is action, sir, action and not confounded philosophy.

I think what makes compelling fiction or cinema is when you're basically taking the most intense moments of experience and you're creating a song or a narrative out of it.

Real life is messy, and drama is a shaped version of real life.

In each scene, the writer sets up a situation, which brings a conflict as well as either a small victory or a loss at the close of that particular scene.

We try to be driven by what's a good story, what's truthful, and the drama of what happens next.

In order to have a plot, you have to have a conflict, something bad has to happen.