Tom Shales Quotes

I tend to write one character at a time. But I don't write the entirety of one character at a time.

If I'm practicing making up what the characters will do, it's never good. In fact, when I catch myself doing that, I try to get rid of that section, and try and let them start making the decisions.

I have always argued, in a good novel, interesting things happen to interesting people.

This is the story, this is your character, I have the sense of the landscape, I have the sense of the scene, I have all that stuff. But I'm also looking for something else to happen, an accident or something. You're focused on the story you intend to tell and then you have to have a peripheral net out to catch these accidents.

In order to deliver the emotional truth in the story, you have to include some of the literal truth.

If the characters are acting true to themselves, then that chemistry and suspense will flow.

When the audience first sees Cooper talking into his tape recorder at the beginning of 'Twin Peaks,' I think that's the greatest introduction to a character I've seen in my career. It tells you everything about the guy right there in a few minutes as well as bringing up a whole load of questions.

It is a wonderful thing in the process of writing when such paper characters are first sketched, and, when one is doing good work, from a certain point in time they come alive and start contradicting the author as well.

I can move my characters through it easily, because I understand the background; I've really studied it.

You just drop a character like this that and the other and it's done.

How it works for me is that a scene comes to mind, usually a scene between the hero and heroine, that depicts the emotional conflict. From that scene, the characters come alive for me. I don't do a lot of preplanning in any way when I write.

When the characters are really alive before their author, the latter does nothing but follow them in their action, in their words, in the situations which they suggest to him.

Whenever you can manoeuvre your characters into a situation where they both have a good argument to make, you're on the right track.

For me, screenwriting is all about setting characters in motion and as a writer just chasing them. They should tell you what they'll do in any scene you put them in.

I don't plot my novels - I move along with my characters.

For me, emotion comes first. If I have to change a scene, invent a scene, change dialogue, or put Graff by the lake in order to feel that dynamic, and the end results feels like 'Ender's Game,' then hopefully it works.

With all of the qualities of the scene-setting, the dialogue, the place and time and the time and place in which your characters move. And I want to move with the characters, move with them and describe the world in which they are living.

There is one plot point in one of the 'D'Arnath' books that I don't think I handled as well as I could have. Am I going to tell you which one? No way!

It's always hard, when introducing readers to a new world/set of rules, not to lay it all out manual-style in the opening chapters but make sure to put the action and the characters at the front. If people don't become invested in them and in the story, the world in which it's set will become a burden.

I remember the guest stars who came, they were always trying to find a new plot for their characters because they wanted to stay. It was really a great working environment.

First comes an idea. Then, characters begin to evolve out of the landscape of that idea. And then, finally, characters dominate: plot is simply a function of what these people might do or be. Everything has to flow from their personalities; otherwise it will not be emotionally engaging, or plausible.

It's necessary to track characters all the way through an opera. If you're dealing with more than one or two characters, it's very easy to forget that the others have lives of their own that feed into the story.

I do novels a bit backward. I look for a situation, a milieu first, and then I wait to see who walks into it.

I consider plot a necessary intrusion on what I really want to do, which is write snappy dialogue.

The 'Lost' style book is really quite set. We do things like, we walk through the jungle, and we stop and turn and talk to each other. We never talk and walk. We always stop to talk.