Mark Waid Quotes

I don't write fight scenes in comics all that well. I think they're a waste of space unless they can move a story forward in some compelling fashion. You've only got twenty-two pages to work with. Why throw that away on a set of meaningless punches?

Because there is actually something very interesting in Goodfellas, how the style of the film changes as time goes by and based on the mental state of the protagonist.

You use simple brushstrokes in a screenplay for things over which you would take much greater pains in a novel.

I think I can speak with a degree of authority... today, the biggest driving force of movies is pace; God help you if you try to put in a scene that is about character and not plot.

Learning to write comics is, in fact, so bloody difficult because it's such a weird form that it does actually make you a bit more adaptable for other forms.

The challenge of screenwriting is to say much in little and then take half of that little out and still preserve an effect of leisure and natural movement.

Not only a great game, 'Uncharted 2' raised the bar for storytelling for the medium. The game treated action as a part of the overall story rather than a way to move from plot point to plot point.

In film, you can't go into analytical explorations because the audience will reject that.

There is a comfort zone of knowing where things are going and having characters in place, but the action gets more and more dramatic and is very challenging to describe.

From beginning to end it's about keeping the energy and the intensity of the story and not doing too much and not doing too little, but just enough so people stay interested and stay involved in the characters.

You've either got to find a way to make your continuing characters insteresting without making them maudlin or overwrought, or you've got to put more emphasis on the suspects.

The reason most novelists are not good screenwriters is that you don't have time for a lot of details. Novelists can really create a richer experience for the reader and have many subplots. You only have 90 pages because each page is a minute of screentime. You have to have certain things happen by certain pages, a certain story arc in the movie.

You always start a fight scene or an action scene with, 'What are we learning about this character at the moment, and how are we gonna arc him or her in the next three minutes,' and it's no different with 'Deadpool' or 'Atomic Blonde' or 'John Wick.'

The thing that I like about action sequences is that if they're done well, you get to know more about the character in those few minutes than you do through 10 minutes of exposition.

I'm so tired of stories starting, 'Maud Jones was walking her dog down Broadway.' You've got to go over to the back page somewhere to finally find out the damn dog was run over by a truck. Get the thing told, for heaven's sake. Everybody doesn't have to be an O. Henry.

In books, you can just wallow in dialogue, and you can just wallow in written words. In screenplays, every line has to serve the purpose of the line that's implied before it and the line that's implied after it. Maybe five lines have to do the work of fifty lines.

A lot of shows, things will just simmer and simmer and maybe never explode into the open, or only risk exploding into the open when it's clear that the series has gotten to its endgame. So I'm always impressed - but not surprised - when 'Scandal' just completely goes for it.

It is very tough to make a short film. It's like writing a short story, which is tougher than writing a novel. You can't afford to faff around; you can't indulge. You have to get to the point.

During script narrations, if I feel the screenplay mood jumping abruptly, I tell the director, and they work on it.

I'm a big veteran of being able to, in one comic, explain to you everything that you need to know to get forward in the story without you having to refer back to years of continuity and a universe in these superhero comics.

If action scenes just happen decontextualized, they lose their weight and the viewer can feel they don't make sense and that they wouldn't have happened that way.

The best thing as a director is being able to be part of the thing that's so cool about a TV show, like running a character arc over six episodes or multiple series.

In a film, you only have a finite amount of time, and you're so concerned with saying what happened and making it a gripping short story with a satisfying ending.

Some directors ask for a hero introduction number, a duet and a fast number towards the climax. Most of the times, these songs only hinder the story.

To make 'Sound of My Voice,' we had to conceive the entire world and understand it holistically. If you want to show less in a movie, you've got to figure out more.