Mark Billingham Quotes

In film, because you know where the ending is, characters can change, but in television, you substitute revelation for change, and that can be hard to pull off.

In the 'Buffy' room, it was never about a plot twist, ever. It was always about, 'Tell the story, tell the characters, complicate their lives, make things get worse,' but we never worked backwards from the plot, and it was always a great lesson.

I've often said the reader knows every bit as much about Thorne as I do. When I created him for 'Sleepyhead,' I was determined he should be a character who would develop, book by book, change and grow as we all do, and who - crucially - would be unpredictable.

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

I think everybody goes through changes, and the same should be said for fictional characters, especially ones that you follow on television.

In TV, you may think your character's one thing for two episodes, and then the third episode it could be something different.

One reason I find all this character growth and narrative swerving so exhilarating is because I never got to do it when I wrote for TV. Our characters needed to remain consistent from week to week.

When you put your characters in a dire situation, they often do things that surprise even you, so you have to go back and revise your original conception of who they are.

I care more, and I think readers do also, for characters in a state of transformation.

The Duffers like that; they like watching their characters grow.

We did so much work developing the character of Kratos, why would we throw all that out? We're sort of treating the first seven games like chapter one of this character's life.

As you do on any cable series, if they introduce you as the villain, then you better start working towards making him a really good guy, or if they introduce you as a really good guy, then you better start working towards being the villain. Your character has to go somewhere, or else they become very uninteresting.

If we can continue to tell stories where fans don't know what will happen next, I think that will be a plus in this 'Divas Revolution.'

Audiences are just like us as writers - we grow attached to characters. In certain ways you don't want them to change.

It's nice to create a character, not just within two scenes, but within the journey of a whole movie. It's fun to do that.

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.

Film is so much to do with perfection and how differently you can feel about someone at the beginning of the film and the end of the film.

I think what good television does well is that it shows characters evolving.

My character on 'The Good Wife' is a smaller character, and his story arcs are typically season-long, unless it's a big episode for him. His transitions take place over many, many hours.

I'd never really been in a series, where you see a man at different points and perspectives in his life. Usually it's a film, where I'm playing a character who just comes in and offers something up.

I like taking a character at the most intense moments of their lives and exploring all that in full and then moving on.

I'd love to do a film. I'd love to play a character that I know the beginning, middle and end of.

I usually start with a repulsive character and go on from there.

My books usually end where they began. I try to bring characters back to a point that is familiar but different because of the growth that they have gone through.

I'm drawn particularly to stories that evolve out of the character of the protagonist.