Geoff Ryman Quotes

I love writing. I think writing and directing go hand in hand.

Once I'm given an idea for a story I have a million ideas on how it should be illustrated, but I don't have a big shoebox full of unfinished ideas.

The success of the movie industry comes from the story. And the story comes from somebody putting something down on paper.

I started as a writer; I started writing when I was little. The acting and directing was an outgrowth of my desire to tell stories.

Your instincts for what's dramatic are the same whether you're working on a drawing or on a script.

When I create and write for TV, I build universes that will have arcs lasting seasons, whereas theatre allows me to explore storylines that will open up for two hours or less. Both are wonderfully fulfilling, but they couldn't be more different.

I always feel like a script is a recipe, and then you bring the elements into the recipe, and you cook with it.

For me, writing is a part of directing. It's the first stage of directing.

The necessity to conceptualise has to come very early on, and defining a vector of development for that film also at the beginning of the process will allow you much more freedom as you go along.

The whole thing of doing a TV series, I find it very daunting not knowing where the story's going.

I've been directing more and more the last few years, I find it an enjoyable challenge.

At least I want to be making films that are somehow born out of me that are stories I want to tell. The challenge is figuring out how to do it where you can make them personal, yet still deliver to an audience a film experience that is satisfying and emotional, and that's what I'm trying to do.

I want to direct, I want to be part of something creative, something with quality.

It's about the stories. If I write 14 stories that I love, then the next step is to get the environment of music around it to best envelop the story, and all kinds of sonic goodness - sonic goodies.

Seriously, you know - I love to write. I enjoy the process; I enjoy the different processes, because writing for film and television and graphic novels is all very different. So I've never had the feeling of, 'Oh, you have to do this one thing.'

When I make a movie, I have both a specific and vague, amorphous dream idea of what the movie is going to be. Of course, I don't actually know what it's going to be, but I'm still striving to get to some place with it.

The multilevel, the conscious and the unconscious, is natural when I write scripts, when I come up with ideas and stories.

I think that if you have a knack for storytelling, and you work really hard at it, you'll have a chance to tap into something deep. But the fact remains that good sentences are hard won. Any writer worth a lick knows constructing a sentence, a paragraph, or a chapter is hard work.

First, I would find an object which I would think is suitable for my characters and stories, then write about it, and in the end, I ended up with a house full of thousands of objects.

I find that screenwriting is at best kind of a hackwork in some ways.

I just let the character speak to me and things appear.

When I sit down to write, I don't think, 'OK, what is the next David O. Russell film I can write, or what is Harvey Weinstein going to want to buy?' Or even, 'What are filmgoers going to want.' I try to think, tell a good story. Just do what you do.

I don't understand the whole testing-numbers thing. It is not how I want to make movies.

I have seen too many screenwriters of promise become formula addicts and slaves to stop watch structure. Spend that time watching movies, reading screenplays, reading plays, and most importantly - write from your gut.

To write a novel is to embark on a quest that is very romantic. People have visions, and the next step is to execute them. That's a very romantic project. Like Edvard Munch's strange dreamlike canvases where people are stylized, like 'The Scream.' Munch must have had that vision in a dream, he never saw it.