Tim Federle Quotes

There's a positive side to film and television, the sense of feeding into the theater... Your fans will follow you, hopefully, and be open-minded to see you play other things and experience other stories you want to tell.

When you're writing for a sequel and there's a movie that's been deemed sacred ground by the fanbase that's the predecessor, you cannot do anything to tread on that, so it's a bit trickier than just being able to sit down and write something.

The thing with being on a series that runs that long is that the writers run out of things to do.

I actually thought 'Desperate Housewives' finished very well. I just think there's still stories to be told. I feel like I get that from fans that they weren't done watching those people's lives.

I did not know at first that it would be a series; I discovered after the first novel that I had more to say about it, so I did another. And another, and then the readers demanded yet more.

It's always hard when you're playing someone for a lot of people out there who are going to see the movie after reading the books. There's a communion between a reader and the writer, so people will have an idea who Sirius Black is and I might not be everyone's idea of that.

If I'm trying to please every craze fan, then I can't. Of course, we all want to please the fans.

'The Names' is planned as a nine-part series. I have a kind of road map: I know the final scene of episode nine. But as to exactly how we get there, what detours or horrible accidents we might have to pass through, I like to keep that a little fluid.

You invent this massive lagoon of information without any pressure to do anything apart from create this person, a person that might fit the bill that is the character that is emerging from the research.

With 'Battlestar Galactica,' we had such resistance from the fan base to changing it. The upshot was, we ultimately won them over.

When you do an animated series and add characters who are not from the canon, you really have to win over the hardcore fans.

Fans always have an opinion of their own. We only try to live up to their expectations.

There are just so many options that people have. But as a writer, you'll drive yourself crazy, if you worry about that too much. People watch a lot of TV, so they think certain things are going to happen, and you're always trying to subvert expectations.

There's that lovely thing for the first month or two of writing a new book: OK, I don't know what that character's going to do, but we'll find out later. After about three or four months you come to that bit where you've got to put some plot in before it's too late, and you have to go back and start inserting plot, and, ooh, I've left out the literature, OK, lets put some in.

As such, anything is always possible, even if your protagonist is a plumber. But it's the possibility, the limitless possibilities, of any fake life, that make writing about it so challenging.

You have to trust your instincts and hope the fans like what you do, but you don't gut check with the fans. If we're going to make a series, people are going to have a lot of opinions and if there's one overwhelming majority or one thing you continuously hear repeated from the fans, you certainly take that into account going into next season.

If I write a cop show, it's not up to me to decide how different it is from 'Law & Order.' I had screenwriters go on and on and on about how their cop show isn't like any other cop show on TV. They made very good points, and it absolutely doesn't matter. It's entirely up to the audience to decide.

While we were in the middle of 'Avatar' we got a lot of volatile reaction from fans. They were very upset with the direction we were taking Zuko.

I could make up characters till the cows came home. Plot's what hard. Very hard.

The fans are not in the locker room, they're not at the practice facility, they're not in the office with us. They want wins; we understand that.

My experience of fiction was, in the beginning, so exploratory. I wasn't sitting down to a desk at Yaddo with a month, thinking I have to have a draft of a novel.

I really do care what people think, and I revolved my whole career and all the twenty five years with Dream Theater... I ran that band and made decisions based on caring what the fans thought and wanted.

With acting, the response is usually delayed and takes time, unlike with singing, from where I instantly get fans' response.

I think finite series gives you more time to write down your journey in any show. When it's a finite series, you know the start and know your end. The writers and actors know what is going to happen, so the interest is not lost.

While I was writing 'Elizabeth Is Missing' and struggling with the intricacies of the plot, I told myself the next book would be really simple and linear, and I'd have it all worked out before I set down a single word.