Oren Peli Quotes

I believe the most important thing you can do in any kind of novel is to make your reader want to go on with it and want to know what happens next.

We figured the audience would want good stories, great art, wonderful characters, people you could fall in love with that we would immediately put through hell.

The first rule is you have to create a reality that makes the reader want to come back and see what happens next. The way I tried to do it, I'd create characters that the reader could instantly recognize, and hopefully bond with, and put them through situations that keep the reader on the edge of their seat.

I believe what makes great television is wanting to watch particular characters.

And the most important thing - apart from telling a good, believable story, and being a true character - is to be someone the audience will care about, even if you're playing a murderer or rapist.

In film and theater, you know the story and the journey from beginning to end, but with TV, you can keep peeling away layers and exploring a new world each week.

People love storylines. They love them because at some point, the talent will get people emotionally invested.

What I have learned from working on those great shows is what is the DNA that makes them so deeply involving and interesting for an audience over a long period of time. So much has to do with character, complexity, and sophistication.

I think it's touching that the fans feel so close to the characters that they feel personally hurt. I've felt that way in plenty of TV shows - 'Game of Thrones,' 'Mad Men.' How could they do that to that character? That's drama.

It was unpredictable, good storytelling that brought you back each week.

When you think of a great twist or a red herring or a way of misdirecting the reader, it is good, but you know that they are just tricks at the end of the day, and the way to keep interest is to write characters that people care about.

If you create a good story that has a lot of story value... I think audiences like that. It's why they stick with the same TV show over and over.

That's what's so great about television. You're able to tell this long story, where you couldn't really do that in a film because you have to tell a story in an hour and a half or two hours.

I love a really good storyline.

To be completely honest, I just like whatever tells a good story. Put me in whatever setting, scenario, genre. If you're telling a good story, it's great and it's fun to get caught up in.

I wasn't interested in novelty. I was looking for good drama.

From beginning to end it's about keeping the energy and the intensity of the story and not doing too much and not doing too little, but just enough so people stay interested and stay involved in the characters.

The audience wants to be attracted not by the critics, but by a great story. You must deliver to the audience emotion - and when I say emotion, I mean suspense, drama, love.

What I find frustrating about scripted television is that it's rare that you are surprised by how you feel about the character, or how you feel about the show.

Well, I'm always drawn to the drama first. A story is really only interesting to me, if you can remove all of the genre moments and remove the supernatural element, and it still works. Then, I'm interested.

I think television is about the characters you want to see again, and so you want to invite these people into your home. And certainly, seeing them get into bad situations and then watching them have to get themselves out, that's always super satisfying.

Like any compelling show on television, what works best in WWE is relationships. What's the relationship between these two people, and how does the conflict manifest itself into box office?

I loved writing 'Lost.' It was like a never-ending opera, in a way.

Fans want to see a story with characters, and they want to see a story.

My writing has always been what you call 'narrative fiction' in the sense that it's got very strong plots and twists at the end.