Zal Batmanglij Quotes

To be honest, I don't think of any of my characters as minor characters - they're all the main characters in a story that I don't necessarily get to tell.

The villain drives the plot.

A little light on the RPG elements but heavy on action, 'Mass Effect 2' was the game that created a world of characters that I actually cared about. When it came down to making those tough decisions during the final mission, I actually had to put the controller down and think about my choices.

One pleasure of working on a trilogy is watching characters warp and grow over time.

It's always good to have a story arch.

If I have several bad guys and I only want to end up with one of them, then I have to decide which one I want in the end. And normally it's the one who is the most interesting talker.

Once a novel gets going and I know it is viable, I don't then worry about plot or themes. These things will come in almost automatically because the characters are now pulling the story.

We think we've got great stories and characters that will lend themselves to great standalone experiences, and that's the way we're focusing on it.

As writers, we must keep throwing problems at our characters. Conflict is the heart of good storytelling. Hiking in nature along a twisting trail can remind us what a good story feels like. It's the opposite of a treadmill - or an interstate highway.

Before 'Wings' came out, I told a few people that at the end of book one, readers should think Laurel made the right choice. Then, at the end of 'Spells,' they should understand why Laurel made the choice she did.

I don't need all that much - I just need to know who my characters are and what kind of jam they're going to get into, and I'll write myself out of their jam.

I've never sat down and thought about the difference between plot and theme. To me, that's never been important.

The nature of storytelling, since the dawn of man, has a beginning, a middle, and an end.

The biggest lesson learned from 'X-Men: The Last Stand' or 'X3' was that if you are going to tell a Phoenix story, tell the Phoenix story. Don't make it the subplot of the movie. Make it the plot of the movie.

You want, in a sense, to relate to the main character, so often, the main character POV is a bit more of a blank slate.

With TV season structures - and I'm a huge TV watcher - you look at shows like 'Breaking Bad,' which is my favorite show of all time, and 'The Sopranos,' which is pretty high up there as well, and there was that thing where, every season, Walter White would go up a level, but there would be a new bad.

Things that matter are a great story, entertainment, how the lead part moves the story forward and who the directors are.

We have a 25-year head start for the stories of 'Scorpion.' By the time we get to Season Two and Three, the stuff that happened because of Season One will actually fuel Season Three. So it'll become a self-sustainable show.

I actually don't like saying 'lead character,' which is an interesting thing. If you say there's a lead, then there has to be someone to follow.

My way of deciding whether a film is worth doing is if you can get through it all in the first read.

My characters are not thinking about the act breaks. They're thinking about what they need to do to move forward. As long as I focus on that, the story starts to progress. As soon as I think, 'We're 20 pages in, something better blow up,' we're in trouble.

The idea behind 'Gloria' was to take a secondary character - the aunt, the mother - and stay with her as she becomes our protagonist.

What you would call a 'lead,' I've always considered a supporting part, and what people would call 'supporting parts,' I've considered leads. In a way, I look at it in reverse, because supporting parts - when they're done correctly - are the ones that are progenitors for storylines, to move forward.

I don't really think in terms of genre, I think in terms of story and character.

I am simply not interested, at this point, in creating narrative scenes between characters.