Walter O'Brien Quotes

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.

Any important series like 'Game of Thrones' or 'The Walking Dead' base their product around the characters and their background.

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.

Even though 'Glee' is sometimes a hard road, I am very excited about writing a multi-year arc.

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.

There's something really satisfying if you've created a bunch of characters that have withstood 25 episodes.

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

I've always loved shows that combine both approaches - that have a mythology and a set of characters, whose stories develop and change, and where the relationships evolve and fracture.

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

'Homeland' really is one of those shows where they start to write more or less depending on what's kind of going on in a relationship between characters.

I keep an elaborate calendar for my characters detailing on which dates everything happens. I'm constantly revising this as I go along. It gives me the freedom to intricately plot my story, knowing it will at least hold up on a timeline.

There is a natural progression to 'Lost,' and as the story goes forward, it's going to change. It's not a static story. The franchise of 'Lost' is not characters sitting on a beach.

I think it is important that you care about the characters, and you are not just waiting for the next action sequence but have a vested interested in what happens to them.

But I also wanted to give them an intelligent emotional journey, without having to suspend reality - to be able to look at those characters and see reasons for the relationships and why what happens happens.

I think it's really great to be able to stick with a character for a long period of time. It's not like you have one shot, and that's it.

In writing a series of stories about the same characters, plan the whole series in advance in some detail, to avoid contradictions and inconsistencies.

As writers, we must keep throwing problems at our characters. Conflict is the heart of good storytelling. Hiking in nature along a twisting trail can remind us what a good story feels like. It's the opposite of a treadmill - or an interstate highway.

I like the idea of a TV show. You take time to get to know your characters. You can introduce a lot of characters. You don't need your three-action set pieces that you usually need for movies.

I don't need all that much - I just need to know who my characters are and what kind of jam they're going to get into, and I'll write myself out of their jam.

For me, one thing I love is having an arc for a character.

My history is that I will create a character, and they will have a book to themselves, and then I'll integrate the character into the larger world of all my books.

You have to think about storytelling over the long haul: what is going to engage an audience for, potentially, years and how characters can become deeply involving for an audience.

Drama comes from characters changing. If characters stay the same and nothing changes, there's really nothing to look at.

I'm drawn to interesting female characters and good storylines.

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.