Andy Weir Quotes

If you don't care for the villain, if you don't love him and hate him at the same time, then he's just boring.

The more successful the villain, the more successful the picture.

Eventually, after the hero and heroine, it is the antagonist who comes with the most anticipation in any film.

We need the villain sometimes. It makes for an interesting story.

The villain of any story is often the most compelling character.

With a mini series you can give the story a proper sense of pacing, a proper sense of closure.

Think 'Game of Thrones.' In the old days, this sort of show might be considered bad writing. It doesn't really seem to be moving toward a crisis or climax, it has no true protagonist, and it's structured less like a TV show or a movie than a soap opera.

You don't need to like your protagonists.

The hero is never the star of the story.

Whenever people say they didn't like the main character of a book, they mean they didn't like the book. The main character has to be a friend? I don't get that.

I hate plots.

When you're not playing the hero of the story, then you have to know that you're always a foil for the good guy. I love playing that. I think that's always an interesting place to be.

I firmly believe that a story is only as good as the villain.

The thing should have plot and character, beginning, middle and end. Arouse pity and then have a catharsis. Those were the best principles I was ever taught.

It's hard to be scared if you don't feel for a character, because you don't care if they die or live.

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

Plots may be simple or complex, but suspense, and climactic progress from one incident to another, are essential. Every incident in a fictional work should have some bearing on the climax or denouement, and any denouement which is not the inevitable result of the preceding incidents is awkward and unliterary.

I think too often in films, people think endings are a summation of plot, and I don't like that. Because once you know where you're going as an audience member, then it's like a video game. You're just waiting for them to get through the levels and beat the bad guy. And I just think that's boring.

One of things that drives me nuts is you rarely get bad guys who are written very well.

There's something to be said for a likable character, but fiction has a way of upending our ordinary standards.

For me, in any story that I take, the antagonist is more interesting and multi-dimensional.

You get so caught up in what you're writing - action sequences tend to do that more than anything else because you're living it, and feeling for your characters.

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.

The first act is the easiest to plot. The second act is always the hardest to plot. Generally a good, you know, sometimes the third act can be difficult because you can get into a rut in the third act - everybody runs to their Corvette, has a chase, and you catch the bad guy.

I think it's very easy to disgust the reader with violence on the page - that's incredibly easy - but it's far harder to make a reader care about a character.