Lasse Hallstrom Quotes

It was always about the story rather than the character.

In a series, you really need to stay open-minded. It's not like a play or a film, where you can create and fully commit to your character's back-story.

When you're reading, like, a character's thoughts, or when it's in first person, you're reading kind of their own story, so you have the opportunity to see what makes that character complex or complicated. And to me, that's what the whole point of fiction is.

My books are primarily plot driven but the best plot in the world is useless if you don't populate them with characters that readers can care about.

The action genre is not always the most synonymous with character development.

I can always tell when a filmmaker doesn't care about his or her characters; they just care about setting them up to kill them off.

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.

There are very few works of fiction that take you inside the heads of all characters. I tell my writing students that one of the most important questions to ask yourself when you begin writing a story is this: Whose story is it? You need to make a commitment to one or perhaps a few characters.

The story is always in service to the characters, and is only as long or short, or neat or ragged as it needs to be.

So I work hard to present the human side of my characters while not neglecting the plot.

I definitely have character arcs in mind for each character unless I kill them.

Once you have your characters, they tell you what to write, you don't tell them.

To me, it all comes down to things being character-driven. It's hard for me to look beyond that. CG and all this cool stuff - so be it. But to me, it pretty much begins and ends with character-driven plots rather than technologically-driven plots.

I'm always writing about character first. Plot, such as it is, comes from the characters.

I think a lot of drama, nowadays, is character-based and development-based, but 'True Blood' is very plot-oriented.

There is nothing that's been in any of my novels that, in my view, hasn't been either illuminating surroundings or defining a character or moving a plot.

I think I try to look at all my films and break them down because, at the end of the day, it's about creating characters that you like.

Whenever you're blessed and given a second season, you can really let the characters evolve. That first season, you're setting everything up. It's background, where they're coming from, what they want to do. And then you get to marinate in it that second season.

It's always nice to do the flashbacks. That's what's so great about 'Scandal' is that we get to do flashbacks and then keep figuring out and discovering more things about our characters that make them fuller.

It always comes down to script and characters.

When it comes to a character, I make sure that it adds to the plot.

My characters aren't chess pieces. I don't move them around some big board. I actually care about these fictitious people.

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.

As a writer, I feel like your favorite character shouldn't be safe.

Normally when I'm sent a script I'll read it through to see how it hangs as a story and then I'll go back and read it through again and look at the character.