Kathy Baker Quotes

I'm not really good at character or plot development. I'm just interested in big comedic moments.

Because I was a television writer for many years, I write very conversationally. I put things straight, and with a lot of humor.

I care more about making sure the story is correct and the characters are behaving in character than I do about the individual jokes.

I think writers have become hypnotised by the number of jokes on the page at the expense of character.

You asked what is the secret of a really good sketch. And it is a sketch is a small play. It's got a beginning, and a middle and an end. It should have a plot; it should have the characters, conflict. It is a little play. And in it, will be funny stuff.

Part of my writing style can be attributed to my mother's impatience with comedy, because whenever I told her a story she would say, 'Yeah, yeah, just tell me: is it good for you or bad for you?' Consequently, I think, I was always afraid to indulge in the time that you need to tell a joke, very nervous about anything that constituted an Act II.

A novel is utterly your own creation, a very private process. I think of a novel as a noun and a screenplay as a verb. In a novel, very little needs to happen; you can explore a person's memories and thoughts and fantasies. In a screenplay, it's all action; you must push the story on.

The head writer loves that my character is a boor.

I'm a novelist first, and I wrote a bunch of books, and everything I write, I just find people are more interesting when there's an element of humor to it.

Every creator sets up their world differently. That's what's so amazing about someone like Aaron Sorkin and his writing.

When I'm writing a story, which takes me a year or more, I can feel my character living with me - they're responding to whatever funny, familial, or social situation I'm in, and I think about their responses constantly.

In 'Me Before You,' the two characters popped into my head fully formed, which is really strange and unusual. Other books, I sit on them for two or three months. I have a whole routine: I buy a nice book; I hand-write all their characteristics. I put them through little tests just to see how they would react to things.

In a comedy, after the day is done, you can figure out ways of how to make it even funnier for the next day. In dramas, it's very different - the mindset that you're in.

The characters can't be wittier than people are in real life. They have to be character witty.

And I think it's very rare to have good stories, well written comedies.

Characters are the key to a good book. It took me several novels to comprehend that.

You can't really write until the characters kind of show up one day and tell you what they're going to say. You start to hear the rhythm of the way the people talk, and then it becomes easier.

I'm good at coming up with wacky characters and funny dialogue.

You have to start from a place of trying to create a character.

What I love about sketch is that the writing of it is idea-based. It's not story-based. It's like, 'This is a behavior, and we're going to write, in a small sample, the funniest way to heighten this behavior.' Sitcoms or movies are about story.

Usually, when I write a novel, it takes me about 100 pages to figure out the voice of the narrator.

With comedy, I've always had a pretty good sense of what I like and how to execute it well, but drama has its own rules.

Most of my films have been very character driven.

I do feel like anything benefits from character logic. That can be from the dumbest ad to the greatest Shakespearean drama to the silliest 'Saturday Night Live' sketch. There is a certain specificity in detail, which you can get when you're paying attention to stuff like that.

Being a screenwriter for a comedy, you're writing for characters in them in their voice. I could write anyone.