J. H. Wyman Quotes

Books ought to have good endings.How would this do: and they all settled down and lived together happily ever after?

The way that Dickens structured his books has a form that we most readily recognize now from, say, the great T.V. series, like 'The Wire' or 'The Sopranos.' There's one central plot line, but then from that spin off all kinds of subplots.

I seem to have a talent for writing endings that seem just right to me but that frustrate other people.

On any serialized show, you're going to have through-lines that take you through the season, and you're going to have individual arcs that resolve themselves in shorter order.

The biggest regret I have about 'Rubicon' is that we didn't end it. Sometimes you do these shows and you don't have the opportunity to get closure. Stories are supposed to have a beginning, middle and an end.

The nice thing about a series is you can end on cliffhangers all the time. You can be like, 'You know what? Here we go, this person just died, end of book.' And with the end of the series, you're very conscious of all the plotlines that were left hanging. There's a balance there to wrap those up but still leave it exciting.

I very much use Bill Willingham's approach on 'Fables,' which is that rather than having an end point to a series, I have an end point for the various story lines.

There are all these great TV series; you can watch all these hours and hours of shows and ideas, but there's still something great about a movie that unfolds in a couple of hours, and you have the complete experience.

Any important series like 'Game of Thrones' or 'The Walking Dead' base their product around the characters and their background.

It's the reason I love doing TV - revisiting stories and characters and the length of the story arcs.

With the finale episode of 'Gravity Falls' our job as storytellers is to finish all the things we've started.

I think that comics and television, as mediums, go hand in hand. Both tell long-form, continuing stories that are parsed out into little chapters and, if are successful, continue for years and years. What that means to me, as a writer, is it tells stories of transformation and evolution as characters.

As regards plot I find real life no help at all. Real life seems to have no plots. And as I think a plot desirable and almost necessary, I have this extra grudge against life.

It is nice when things end. That is what stories do - they end. It is hard to write endings and it is hard to come to the end of things, but I think when it is done right, it is a very satisfying way to appreciate something.

I think the possibility of continuing on a comedy is greater than a drama.

Endings are the hardest part. I find there's a great relief that at the end of every episode, every hour of TV you produce, while you want a proper and satisfying ending, it doesn't have to end The Story, in capital letters.

When you're reading a novel, I think the reason you care about how any given plot turns out is that you take it as a data point in the big story of how the world works. Does such-and-such a kind of guy get the girl in the end? Does adultery ever bring happiness? How do winners become winners?

So much for endings. Beginnings are always more fun. True connoisseurs, however, are known to favor the stretch in between, since it's the hardest to do anything with. That's about all that can be said for plots, which anyway are just one thing after another, a what and a what and a what.

I don't write [screenplay character] biographies beforehand. I usually go in knowing some sequences: this is where I want to start, this is where I want to end.

What's important on a comedy show, or any show, is that some stories have to go somewhere. There have to be ends to the beginnings and middles you create. But sometimes it's like a way station on the highway, then the actual thing doesn't have to be this giant, climactic, life-changing, game-changing thing.

I think that we're moving into this new phase of television where audiences are really embracing stories with a beginning, middle, and end.

The story comes around, pushing at our brains, and soon we are trying to ravel back to the beginning, trying to put families into order and make sense of things. But we start with one person, and soon another and another follows, and still another, until we are lost in the connections.

Beginnings are definitely the most exciting, middles are perplexing and endings are a disaster.

All you need to know about plotting is twofold. 1. Give your characters goals. 2. Don't let them reach those goals.

I trust the [series] writers when I'm filming, because it's interesting for me to go in every week and see what's going to happen, and the challenge for me as the actor is to make it work.