George Mastras Quotes

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

If you can find a way your character moves, you know more about your character than you'd ever dream.

Rather than just making a movie about video games, I wanted to start with the character and what the character was going through.

Unlike novels with a hero or two heroines, in 'One Amazing Thing,' all the characters tell stories they've never told anyone before, so all the voices become equally important.

There's something about uninterrupted singing that just doesn't work for me, because at some point, I need my characters to talk. Without meaning to offend anyone, a musical like 'Les Miserables' would be the last thing I'd ever be interested in.

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

I locate that special problem in a character and then try to understand it. That's the genesis of all my work.

The main characters for 'The Seer and the Sword' made an appearance one night and then haunted me for over five years before I began to write them down. Does that count as inspiration? For me, characters tend to show up, stay on to help with the work of writing their stories, and then occasionally deign to visit after a book is finished.

I rarely return to characters. My characters, at least most of them, are much more a part of that superorganism that is the story than separate and independent creatures.

In prose, leaps of logic can be made while the protagonist thinks about things and arrives at conclusions. Even with voiceover, there's no real way of having an inner voice without it taking over the entire story.

Also, in my acting, I feel very much like a storyteller, exploring the flaws of the characters that I interpret. I look for the imperfections, and I love a character that is just so flawed.

'Longmire' is more of a show about the characters, and you couldn't pay a bigger compliment than to want to know more about my character, or the characters on the show.

I like dialogue in novels. I wanted to avoid laying history on with a trowel - appearing to be lecturing, as opposed to the characters lecturing their children or students. Dialogue can humanise the story and make it go down somewhat more smoothly.

I think action should be revealed through character, so if you have a plot problem, it's probably a character problem.

A lot of times I'll make films that are mostly character-driven films - stories that involve people. Like, I make the joke: I like to make movies about human beings that live on Earth.

Coming from TV and film, rule number one is that you always service the main character first and foremost. If that's not working, you've got nothing.

Characters develop as the book progresses, but any that start to bore me end up in the wastepaper basket. In real life, we may have to put up with tedious people, but not in novels.

As a writer, you have to put yourself in service to the character, get behind their eyes by delineating the world where the character develops. You have to listen to the character and see him inside his certain world to know what conclusions he would draw.

I used to watch dailies and felt I had to keep on top of the character, but I don't feel that any more.

For me, plot always comes out of character, so I had to be sure of my characters.

As an actor, you want to be able to move your character forward into new ground, but also it's really interesting to go backwards and unpeel those layers and the interesting elements of what your character is and what informs the decisions that you make so that you can have as much meat to work with.

I honestly feel it is important for a director to get obsessed with the characters.

Whenever I write, I write very dialogue-heavy things because I love to force my characters to interact with one another.

From a writer's standpoint, each character and story presents its own unique challenges and delights. I'm deeply curious about all of my characters, and I love peeling away their layers to see what's underneath their skin, or secreted deep within their hearts.

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.