Andrew Coyle Bradley Quotes

I love a good cliffhanger. I love when big events happen in shows. I love shows that aren't afraid to take risks and to really do what's best for the story line and realistic for the story line.

As a writer, I try to appeal to the 'elusive boy audience' the same way I try to appeal to everyone: I do the very best I can to create interesting characters, addictive plots, tons of conflict, believable settings, unexpected plot twists, intriguing beginnings, and satisfying endings.

I don't like plots. I don't know what a plot means. I can't stand the idea of anything that starts in the beginning - you know, 'beginning, middle and end.'

That's how you get surprises, because what movies are all about is surprises.

The suspense of a novel is not only in the reader, but in the novelist, who is intensely curious about what will happen to the hero.

An action movie should, like any other, follow the narrative traditions of literature. That means there should be subtlety, a slow build and a gradual bringing together of all the separate threads of the plot. To see all of it coming together slowly is very rewarding for the audience.

What I do is put my characters into situations that are so precarious there is no way to get out. And then I figure how to get them out.

Not counting 'Small Steps,' I think 'Holes' is my best book, in terms of plot, and setting, and the way the story revealed itself. It hasn't changed my life, other than that I have more money than I did before I wrote it. I'm still too close to 'Small Steps' to compare it to 'Holes.'

I'm not much of a plotter. I start off with an inciting incident, and in classic crime fiction what happens is that all the action flows from that incident. It's very comfy when it all ties up and feels like a complete universe, but my stuff doesn't always work that way.

What's great about well-written material is, if you can shock with justifiable actions, that's the best.

In fiction, it's a big challenge to keep the reader in one place for so long.

King Lear alone among these plays has a distinct double action. Besides this, it is impossible, I think, from the point of view of construction, to regard the hero as the leading figure.

Storylines are how characters create the plots involved in their stories.

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.

I think predictability is built into any good novel in some way - you begin reading Anna Karenina and you know pretty much what's going to happen at the end. But that doesn't mean you know what's going to happen in the middle. For me, it's that sense of what happens in the middle that's important.

Above all, a well-imagined story is organized around extraordinary human behaviors and unexpected and startling events, which help illuminate the commonplace and the ordinary.

A Shakespearean tragedy as so far considered may be called a story of exceptional calamity leading to the death of a man in high estate. But it is clearly much more than this, and we have now to regard it from another side.

I'm very good at plot.

When I'm plotting out a book, I use a storyboard - I'll have maybe three lines across on the storyboard and just start working through the plot line. I always know where relationships will go and how the book is going to end.

Everything you write makes you better. But if you really need a tip, here's one: a good story begins in opposition to its ending. That means you work out how it finishes first, and then begin the story as far away from that point - in terms of character development - as you can.

The more you put out there, the more you have to resolve. 'Air' is the most literary comic I've written so far, and that poses problems.

In 'A Few Best Men,' I play a lesbian character. I played the lesbian sister of the bride who ends up kissing a dude at the end, but she was, like, a full-on lesbian in that. And I beat out famous Australian lesbians for the role.

I would like to do something dark or small. I love independent films. I love emotional scenes. I love people who are struggling with something. I think it's just the juxtaposition to my incredibly happy, positive demeanor.

The great thing about fiction is you can fix things and make things better.

A structure is a bit like a story. People will go along with you - they see where you're going.