Rob McElhenney Quotes

All topics, issues, and subjects in 'The Room' add to the depth of the characters in the movie, and they are equally important.

Every paragraph should accomplish two goals: advance the story, and develop your characters as complex human beings.

'Homeland' really is one of those shows where they start to write more or less depending on what's kind of going on in a relationship between characters.

I quite like some of the movies that have many characters in them.

I try to trace the connection between the characters and that way a story or plot emerges.

The best shows are always the ones that are very, very low-concept and just about great characters.

The bedrock of 'Being Human' has to be characters. I would hope that even if suddenly we had a huge budget per episode, the foundation of the show, and the thing that actually makes it what it is, is character.

I try to create characters that I am fascinated by on some level or intrigued by or can't stand.

I like shows that are ensemble-based, that explore the humanity of every character.

I always look for interesting, complex characters. You know, interesting, well-written material.

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.

It's necessary to track characters all the way through an opera. If you're dealing with more than one or two characters, it's very easy to forget that the others have lives of their own that feed into the story.

When you begin a play, you're going to have to spend a lot of time with those characters, so those characters are going to have to be rich enough that you want to take a very long journey with them. That's how I begin thinking about what I want to write about and who I want to write about.

It's nice to see different dimensions of a character. A love interest and family life are always, I think, important in creating layers and textures.

I think main storylines are what always intrigued me, with those that were the relationships between the characters against whatever backdrop, whether it was in an ordinary universe or a universe in the future.

I'm such a fan of Deadwood. I love the characters in that. They're such wonderful characters. I'm a fan of The Wire. Those are all heavily character-based shows.

In TV, you can really get into not only great characters, but also the relationships. There are all of the backstories and all of the relationships that you have with every person in your life, and the relationships those people have with each other. It's just more dense and there's more time to tell stories.

Any plot you impose on your characters will be onomatopoetic: PLOT. I say don't worry about plot. Worry about the characters. Let what they say or do reveal who they are, and be involved in their lives, and keep asking yourself, Now what happens? The development of relationship creates plot.

I don't know quite how a story develops in my head. It is a bit chaotic. If I am working on a series, one of the main characters at least is already in existence as well as some setting and minor characters. Finding the other main character can be a challenge. Sometimes this character already exists in a minor role in another book.

Quite often my narrator or protagonist may be a man, but I'm not sure he's the more interesting character, or if the more complex character isn't the woman.

'Star Trek' was always a little bit closed emotionally. I never connected to the characters.

You treat characters like people you meet in life-friends or mentors.

It's people politics, people dynamics that make a show really good, whether it's 'Desperate Housewives' or 'Lost' or 'The Sopranos.' It's the people we've grown to love or otherwise.

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.

Having to think so much about fictitious relationships that work or don't work, and with each relationship between characters managing to do one or other of those in its own peculiar way, I spend a lot of time thinking about relationships, real and imagined.