Trevor Moore Quotes

The research is the easiest. The outline is the most fun. The first draft is the hardest, because every word of the outline has to be fleshed out. The rewrite is very satisfying.

Writing is probably one-fifth coming up with the stuff, and four-fifths self-editing again and again and again.

Some stories or passages are more difficult and demand more fussing with than others, but, in general, I'm a two-draft writer rather than a six-draft writer, or whatever.

I didn't become a good writer until I learned how to rewrite. And I don't just mean fixing spelling and adding a comma. I rewrite each of my books five or six times, and each time I change huge portions of the story.

For me the writing, when I'm going to direct it myself, is really just the first draft, and I don't change it very much; I only change it on average about two lines per movie.

When I write a book, I write very cleanly from page one to the last page. I hardly ever write out of sequence.

The way I outline has changed quite a bit from when I first started writing.

It was pretty much the way that it was when I first read it, although one exception would be that some ideas that I had were also incorporated into the script.

I do so much revising as I go along; I wonder how I could write books if I hadn't grown up in the computer age. I think I'd be a very different writer. I find myself cutting and pasting, changing things around and deleting whole paragraphs constantly.

On the last drafts, I focus on the words themselves, including the rub of vowels and consonants, stressed and unstressed syllables. Yet even at this stage I'm often surprised. A different ending or a new character shows up and I'm back to where I began, letting the story happen, just trying to stay out of the way.

Every time I start a new novel, it seems like an impossible undertaking. If I tried to do too much too quickly, I would get lost and feel overwhelmed. I have to go slow, and give things a chance to take form and grow.

When you're making TV, the last thing you want to do is watch TV. It's too much.

Once I have the story in my head, I write it down. The illustrations usually come last.

Normally, I spend a week on the outline and take two weeks to write the book.

Outlining is not writing. Coming up with ideas is not writing. Researching is not writing. Creating characters is not writing. Only writing is writing.

Books arrive in my head all at once, and then it becomes an 18-month process of getting it all down on paper.

It took us nine months to write 'The East'; we didn't start writing it on the computer until seven and a half months into it.

I very rarely write anything before what I see what I'm writing for.

A commission and an original are two different things, and both have their virtues and vices. A commission is a bit more collaborative, in that you outline the story that you think should be told, and then you write it. And then, there are notes and you change it, in the conventional studio system.

Sometimes there were certain things in 'Limmy's Show' where I'd be having to come up with six episodes and as a result there was stuff in there that wasn't my favourite and I'd think, 'ach I'll shove that in this episode.'

So give yourself that chance to put together the 80, 90 pages of a draft and then read it very in a nice little ceremony, where you're comfortable, and you read it and make good notes on it, what you liked, what touched you, what moved you, what's a possible way, and then you go about on a rewrite.

I've always relied on producing more material than I need. With each of my published novels I've written around four times the amount of material that's ended up in the book.

Every poem probably has sixty drafts behind it.

My writing process often begins with a question. I write down ideas and let them stew for about a year. Then, when I sit down to write, I make a list of characters and try to see how they fit.

I get so used to working with writers that my prime occupation is development.