Tina St. John Quotes

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

My advice to aspiring writers of fantasy trilogies or series is that each book needs two main plots. There's the 'big story', the over-arching grand plot of the entire series, and there is the complete-in-itself, one-book plot.

If you'll think about various series you've read, can you think of any instance in which, say, the tenth volume of the series is notably better than the first nine? I can't.

I mean one of the weird things about TV and one of the things that some actors don't like but I kind of dig is that you never know where you're headed, I mean you never know what the writer might think of next.

One of the interesting things about 'Saw' is that you don't find out about things in sequential or linear order. One of the things that fans have liked a lot is, we don't forget about details. They come back and reveal themselves as the story evolves.

What I love with 'Game of Thrones' is, every season, I get to continue to develop the existing themes; every season, I also get to write new themes.

Indian audiences these days aren't really interested in watching a character on screen evolve. They don't want to see a young girl evolve into being a partner and enter motherhood - they are only really concerned about the story. As long as the story is getting interesting with every passing episode, they want more.

The advantage you get of something having been on the air for a while is people get to know the characters more, and they get to be more invested in the world.

I usually have a sense of where my characters are personally and ways in which they might transform throughout the novel. But I never know at the outset how the book will end, nor do I ever stick to my original plan.

The most enjoyable part in writing a series is being able to visit a world I have created and revisit old friends. The challenges are making the book fresh and new for readers who have started from the beginning while still adding old information for new readers.

What is nice about doing a long-running show is finding a language that gives it some depth.

Sci-fi fans are so interested in your character and so attached to the world that you've created.

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 can't imagine soaps will ever stop, because people will always watch as long as they have great stories and characters. But the soaps will have to keep evolving, won't they?

Storytelling is my true passion.

It's amazing how far you can get into a plot before you figure out what you're doing.

What was important for 'Legacies' to actually be a successful show is that we had to introduce new mythology.

What I need is for comics to not cheapen out and just do what they think a bunch of bloodthirsty 15 year old fans want.

I suppose I do have an interest in stories that show complexity.

You have to think about storytelling over the long haul: what is going to engage an audience for, potentially, years and how characters can become deeply involving for an audience.

I love to read the kind of books I write. Genre-breaking. Fresh-concept. World-building. My all-time top three authors would have to be Cormac McCarthy, Thomas Harris, and Pat Conroy.

At 'OITNB,' we really work to keep to the formula that's made this show so popular with everyone who watches it, which is to have really good characters and really interesting stories.

Even if an episode is self-contained, the preceding episodes always affect how the audience takes it in.

This is the biggest trick of the sort of thing I write: creating fun, powerful stories with tons of interesting stuff going socially and culturally that doesn't overly confuse the reader.

When you have 12 hours of storytelling, the cool thing about it is that you get to really leave people with question marks, but hopefully wanting to come back.