Nikita Dutta Quotes

If you create a good story that has a lot of story value... I think audiences like that. It's why they stick with the same TV show over and over.

I think the tricky balance, the most important thing more than the horror is to have a compelling story, compelling drama, a show about great characters that you care about and you want to come back every week to see what they're up to.

In film and theater, you know the story and the journey from beginning to end, but with TV, you can keep peeling away layers and exploring a new world each week.

It was unpredictable, good storytelling that brought you back each week.

If a movie is really working, you forget for two hours your Social Security number and where your car is parked. You are having a vicarious experience. You are identifying, in one way or another, with the people on the screen.

At the premieres, I always watch the audience. If a child asks to go to the bathroom, I know I've failed.

Giving consumers the choice of having it all in one big bite means different viewers are in many different places in the book, making it hard to discuss without spoiling the plot. The intervals between first-run programming provide a space for communion and that tantalizing sense of anticipation.

Well, here's what I'll say: The storytellers of 'Lost' have taken us on a pretty great journey, and there have been questions along the way, and criticisms along the way, but if you look at the totality of the show, or the experience of it as a whole, I think as long as you look at it from that perspective you'll be happy.

I like making stories and characters that people can relate to. I also like giving the audience a departure from whatever they're thinking about in their life and enjoying a show or a movie.

That's what's so great about television. You're able to tell this long story, where you couldn't really do that in a film because you have to tell a story in an hour and a half or two hours.

Before I start, I trick myself into thinking I know what's going to happen in the story, but the characters have ideas of their own, and I always go with the character's choices. Most of the time I discover plot twists and directions that are better than what I originally had planned.

When there is a strong woman character in a story - that always grabs me.

So long as you tell a story that falls within the fairly generous boundaries of the suspense novel, you're free to make the novel as good as you can. You're allowed to challenge the reader. You can experiment with voice and style.

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

We are creating a fabulous franchise with an incredible female action hero.

One of the things I've found most challenging about writing a multibook series is keeping it fresh and evolving while still delivering the familiarity that keeps longtime fans devoted to the characters and story world.

People have really long attention spans, and they love complicated plots. TV series are giving the audience what they want.

We give you characters we'd feel very comfortable judging, and then go: 'Oh yeah? Watch this'.

I simply don't understand authors that know everything before they write it; it seems so cold blooded. I think it's lovely when the story takes over and goes somewhere else.

Television provides the opportunity for an ongoing story - the opportunity to meld the cast and the characters and a world, and to spend more time there.

You set up the story, but the characters start talking, and they go places that you didn't expect. You have to follow.

One reason I find all this character growth and narrative swerving so exhilarating is because I never got to do it when I wrote for TV. Our characters needed to remain consistent from week to week.

When I write fiction, I have the illusion of being able to control these fictional worlds and these characters, and to make them say what I want them to say. Of course, the problem is that it is an illusion, and by the end of it you realize that you're not in control of it at all; the characters have taken over, and they're driving the vehicle.

There are a lot of shows that have secrets and string people along and use the secrets of the narrative engine to keep people coming back every week. I don't know if those programs even have an answer. I don't know how they build their shows.

What I find frustrating about scripted television is that it's rare that you are surprised by how you feel about the character, or how you feel about the show.