Andrew Coyle Bradley Quotes

The leading character isn't always the most important or interesting character; when people think that the protagonist is the character portrayed, it's people who haven't read Shakespeare.

In approaching our subject it will be best, without attempting to shorten the path by referring to famous theories of the drama, to start directly from the facts, and to collect from them gradually an idea of Shakespearean Tragedy.

The tragic element of a character is always intriguing I think.

I was not the young heroic model for 'Hamlet.' I tended to play those characters that orbited around them: the rogues and the rat bags and the idiots and the fools and the clowns that sway the plot somehow from a tangent.

Sometimes, I have themes that interest me or that touch on larger issues but, really, I'm just trying to figure out the plot, or how the characters work. I'm trying to make the best story I possibly can.

A great danger, or at least a great temptation, for many writers is to become too autobiographical in their approach to their fiction. A little autobiography and a lot of imagination are best.

A short story is a shard, a sliver, a vignette. It's a biopsy on the human condition but it doesn't have this capacity to think autonomously for itself.

The next time I write a play - in order to get audience trust for a particular sort of tragic line, I'll try to bring the audience a good distance before that. Part of that is allowing comic moments to occur. I had been afraid of that - that once the audience started laughing in the play, they would never stop.

We cannot arrive at Shakespeare's whole dramatic way of looking at the world from his tragedies alone, as we can arrive at Milton's way of regarding things, or at Wordsworth's or at Shelley's, by examining almost any one of their important works.

The purpose of narrative is to present us with complexity and ambiguity.

If you think about Shakespeare, you remember Richard III and Macbeth before you remember Ferdinand, whose role is just to fall in love and be a bit of a wimp. I love the baddies. More important, though, is making the baddies somehow, weirdly, understood.

The beginning of a plot is the prompting of desire.

I didn't plan to write YA - I had a story that simply wasn't working as a straight-up fantasy novel.

It's not all 'Jane Eyre' out there. In her sweet, honorable, slightly passive-aggressive way, Jane was as perfect as a protagonist can get while remaining interesting; in fact, she's one of my favorites. But most characters are more morally ambiguous.

All I had, originally, were pages of Nolan's dialogue. I think his character serves the story in a nice way. He's a Greek chorus for the goings-on in the Hamptons.

At the heart of any successful film is a powerful story. And a story should be just that: a narrative with a beginning, middle, and end, powerful protagonists that audiences can identify with, and a dramatic arc that is able to capture and hold viewers' intellectual and emotional attention.

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.

Storytelling is ultimately a creative act of pattern recognition. Through characters, plot and setting, a writer creates places where previously invisible truths become visible. Or the storyteller posits a series of dots that the reader can connect.

No two dramatists think or write alike. Ten thousand playwrights can take the same premise, as they have done since Shakespeare, and not one play will resemble the other except in the premise. Your knowledge, your understanding of human nature, and your imagination will take care of that.

I think you have to find the humanity in the character and then the deterioration is a part of the process - the journey of the character. It's like playing King Lear. You can start off as a nice old man who finishes up crazy.

I think on 'Third Watch' that I was the comic relief on a lot of that. I mean, I definitely had dark moments, but people tended to think he was funny even if the character himself wasn't having a fun time.

The mystery form was very helpful for me as a beginning writer because mystery novels and suspense novels have a beginning, a middle and an end.

I feel like I know how to write plot.

When you're playing King Lear, you have to have a little humour, or you will have no tragedy when the king dies.

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.