Michael Arndt Quotes

Whenever I write, I write very dialogue-heavy things because I love to force my characters to interact with one another.

Don't forget to let your reader feel the emotions of the scene. If you get all tied up with the mechanics of where the hero's hands are and not about how they make the heroine feel, then the scene will read flat.

I like dialogue in novels. I wanted to avoid laying history on with a trowel - appearing to be lecturing, as opposed to the characters lecturing their children or students. Dialogue can humanise the story and make it go down somewhat more smoothly.

So much of comics are dictated by characters talking to one another - or in focused spaces where 'the camera' has to stay in pretty close on what's going on.

In a normal movie, you'd never see one guy talk for an entire page, whether good or bad.

The 'Lost' style book is really quite set. We do things like, we walk through the jungle, and we stop and turn and talk to each other. We never talk and walk. We always stop to talk.

The idea of having different characters is really just to get the storyline across, you know? Coming from one particular character makes, to me, the story boring. I get that mainly from novels and that style of writing or movies where there's multiple characters who carry the storyline.

I have always believed that if a film has only two characters, but they do not make any sense, then the film's meaningless.

A certain luxury when you get to writing a novel is to have the space to have your characters just banter.

I like movies about people and movies with characters; that's what I'm drawn to as a person who likes to create these characters within the story, but I like it all, really.

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.

The first thing I read was of my character on the phone talking to Sydney's fiance. Though short, it was so beautifully written, and it made me laugh. I thought if I wanted to play a character, this would be it.

There's something about uninterrupted singing that just doesn't work for me, because at some point, I need my characters to talk. Without meaning to offend anyone, a musical like 'Les Miserables' would be the last thing I'd ever be interested in.

If the characters are acting true to themselves, then that chemistry and suspense will flow.

It's very hard to write a story with only one character. This is because readers want to see your protagonist interacting with others. We come to know people through their interpersonal relations. Even Jack London, in his classic short story 'To Build A Fire,' gave his lone Arctic explorer a dog so that the character would have someone to talk to.

Whenever you can manoeuvre your characters into a situation where they both have a good argument to make, you're on the right track.

They didn't accept me theory - not a theory, but just a thought I had about this character. I noticed that this man only exists when the boy comes into the grocery.

With all of the qualities of the scene-setting, the dialogue, the place and time and the time and place in which your characters move. And I want to move with the characters, move with them and describe the world in which they are living.

When I know what the character I'm supposed to play wants in general terms, and when I know what did the other characters want to do, that's when all these wills collide and the emotions show up.

My favorite part about working in theater is the rehearsal process. I absolutely love the rehearsal process. Working out the characters, figuring the character out, and the relationships between the different characters. I love all of that, which, unfortunately in film, you get very little opportunity to have.

I tend to write one character at a time. But I don't write the entirety of one character at a time.

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.

Most of the time, when I'm writing, I'm writing for myself. I'm thinking, 'What will my character say at this time? What will come out of her mouth?' I create individuals so real to me, I sometimes start talking to them. Then I let them loose on the page.

I've never been interested in watching or reading anything because it's the hero's story. I don't feel the need to be inspired by the character or learn a lesson. I feel the need to be engaged by them.

I believe that every character is a setting, a world with moving parts, and on the other hand, every setting is, in fact, a character - a living breathing thing with personality and backstory. The way stories come to life, at least for me, is when these elements commune in relationship to one another.