Brent Spiner Quotes

My writing partner, Nicki, and I became obsessed with a monologist who performs unscripted shows equipped with nothing more than scribbled bullet points and a glass of water. We wrote him a fan letter and found ourselves sharing lunch and eventually a friendship.

The task of a writer consists of being able to make something out of an idea.

I love bouncing my words off of someone else's, and the fact that writing a story with someone else guarantees you'll get something you never, ever would have written on your own.

I have an ideas book at home with far more ideas than I will ever be able to write.

I write everything I do. On the average, it takes you about sixty months from the first molecule of an idea to it being in front of an audience. I'm actually somebody that creates their own stuff.

Most ideas remain inside you for a while. You tell somebody when there is a spark or a thought, and leave it at that. You come back later, write down a few lines. I makes note in my mind on whether it can be made into a film or not.

If I was at school and one of my friends said something funny, I'd write it down in a notebook and take it to the writers meetings. I never told my friends about it. I just thought I could incorporate stuff that was true to life.

There's always somebody you can call and go have lunch with and just talk out an idea. And it's great, because I need that. It's part of my writing process, to early on sit people down and say, 'Alright, this film I'm working on...' and I tell them everything I have.

Good ideas stay with you until you eventually write the story.

I don't wake up in the morning and say, wow I've got a great idea for a story. But I sit down, and I figure well, let's see.

I have these huge black foam boards on the wall, and tacked to them, I have these white punch cards with my story ideas, scenes and notes.

I so desperately hate to end these movies that the first thing I do when I'm done is write another one. Then I don't feel sad about having to leave and everybody going away. That's why I tend to work with the same people; I really befriend them.

Basically I started to jot notes, lots of faxes back and forth to my writer, we faxed ideas throughout the whole first draft, and started all over again.

When I lead essay workshops, I ask students to come up with at least five topics, which they'll narrow down to one. The winning idea should be the story the student is most excited to tell because it honestly reflects his or her best self.

My writing process often begins with a question. I write down ideas and let them stew for about a year. Then, when I sit down to write, I make a list of characters and try to see how they fit.

And once I know what the first page is, then the rest will come.

If you take a few days to write an outline, you're just making up scenes that you think will work, that you think will be interesting. But as you write it, other ideas occur - better ideas that have to do with what you're writing.

I write every day... I never get ideas unless I'm actually writing. Ideas I get in the shower don't do me any good.

Titles either come to you at the beginning or they don't come to you at all, I find, and I hate the feeling that I haven't got a title because it usually means that you are left at the end scrambling around trying to find something.

Although Bill Finger literally typed the scripts in the early days, he wrote the scripts from ideas that we mutually collaborated on. Many of the unique concepts and story twists also came from my own fertile imagination.

It's kind of a mysterious process, but something will catch my attention, and I'll make a note about it. I may even write a few pages about it, and then I'll put it aside, but I'll sort of keep it in mind. Then as time goes on, other things will gather to it as if it's a magnet, almost, and eventually, there's enough to make the story.

I'd love to work on a script in collaboration.

I write stuff down. I have a chalkboard in the kitchen where I will scrawl stuff down if I have a faint outline of an idea. And I'll go into my office or whatever. But that goes from format to format.

The most fun I ever have is sitting in with Rick writing, and we laugh at our own jokes.

I must write the book out in my head now, before I sit down.