Jay Asher Quotes

I really like writing television, and I like the collaborative writers room feeling. It's ten people, and you're together every day laughing your heads off.

It's fun to have someone to talk to and get input from when you write. I usually get stuck when I'm just in my room writing by myself.

My two bits here are that writing is a solitary job but there are times when one needs to discuss the work, and see what's working and what's not.

Basically I started to jot notes, lots of faxes back and forth to my writer, we faxed ideas throughout the whole first draft, and started all over again.

My writing process often begins with a question. I write down ideas and let them stew for about a year. Then, when I sit down to write, I make a list of characters and try to see how they fit.

Something I've really been wanting to do, ever since 'Six Feet Under' ended, was create my own version of this idealized writer's room as well as the ideal family.

I must write the book out in my head now, before I sit down.

Let's put it this way: if you are a novelist, I think you start out with a 20 word idea, and you work at it and you wind up with a 200,000 word novel. We, picture-book people, or at least I, start out with 200,000 words and I reduce it to 20.

I start with an idea that is no more than a paragraph long, and expand it slowly into an outline. But I'm always surprised by the directions things take when I actually start writing.

Lots of shows are written completely in the writer's room. And I wouldn't say 'The Walking Dead' is that way. There are three levels to it. There's us in the room. The writers going off by themselves. And me working with the writers on a finished script.

Actually, after while, finding the ideas is the easy part. Sorting them through and turning them into stories, now, that's the hard work.

I love discussing the ins and outs of the collaborative nature of writing.

I have this group of friends that I'll send my scripts to before I send them to a large audience.

So I had a ghostwriter, they call them, or somebody who is an experienced writer, to help. I've got the ideas in my head, it's getting them properly on paper.

I find that with any good run on a show with good writers, they put something on paper, and you put something back on film, and that affects what they put on the paper the next time.

I'm not a writing group member, not a joiner in that way. I don't seek a wide swath of feedback.

Outlining is not writing. Coming up with ideas is not writing. Researching is not writing. Creating characters is not writing. Only writing is writing.

I usually think about titles. I'll hear somebody say something and write it down in my notes, and whenever we go into a room, somebody will start naming off titles, and whoever has the best title, that's what we start writing.

A commission and an original are two different things, and both have their virtues and vices. A commission is a bit more collaborative, in that you outline the story that you think should be told, and then you write it. And then, there are notes and you change it, in the conventional studio system.

Stories often take their own course once you start to write them, especially when you have the benefit of a writers' room and a team of people augmenting and adding to the material.

I think it's important to say typing in the computer is like the last, last phase of my writing process. That's kind of the fun part. Well, it's all somewhat fun, I suppose. But usually what happens is I think about a movie for at least a year - maybe a couple more - and I don't put anything down.

I do a lot of brainstorming with my editors. Sometimes it just comes out in the writing. I'll get an idea as I'm writing the chapter. I try to go for maximum surprises in PLL, stuff you don't see coming. It's a lot of fun!

A lot of my ideas for books come from newspaper articles. But I don't like to be actively looking for ideas.

It's much like writing a screenplay with someone else and that's how we view it, I think.

Where story comes from, I don't know. I know that I become obsessed with something. An idea, an image, a person, the way a person talks. And then something starts happening that I can't explain, and it has a lot to do with language.