Walter Mosley Quotes

I hate even the idea of a synopsis. When stories are really working, when you're providing subtextual exploration and things that are deeply layered, you're obligated to not say things out loud.

With 'Noontide Toll', I wanted to cater to a single story but also collectively more than a single story.

There's just a deeper level of sophistication in the writing of female characters on TV.

In writing the new films, I’ve come to realize that AVATAR’s world, story and characters have become even richer than I anticipated, and it became apparent that two films would not be enough to capture everything I wanted to put on screen.

Adults need more complex narratives. They have their own narratives. The main characters are themselves.

I don't think there is a single sentence in this whole book [East of Eden] that does not either develop character, carry on the story or provide necessary background.

I don't write [screenplay character] biographies beforehand. I usually go in knowing some sequences: this is where I want to start, this is where I want to end.

Another strand of my writing is the importance of the idea. If you think about fiction writing as a spectrum, where at one end of the spectrum in the infrared, are the story tellers, and the people for whom creation of wonderful characters and telling a good story is the most important thing.

have a much harder time writing stories than novels. I need the expansiveness of a novel and the propulsive energy it provides. When I think about scene - and when I teach scene writing - I'm thinking about questions. What questions are raised by a scene? What questions are answered? What questions persist from scene to scene to scene?

In a great horror movie, you've gotta have some character development and you've gotta set some of your people up and you've gotta have a little back story going. You've gotta take that time for exposition.

The best writers are gravitating to that world. What's rewarding also is this: you have a two hour movie, you can't really delve into character that much. In a TV show you can. You can delve into character. You can get into nitty gritty.

When I'm writing a script, I don't worry about plot as much as I do about people. I get to know the main characters - what they need, what they want, what they should do. That's what gets the story going. You can't just have action, you've got to find out what the characters want. And then they must grow, they must go somewhere.

The thing I always say to any writer that I'm working with is: Just make sure that in any argument, EVERYONE is right. I want every single person arguing a righteous side of the argument. That makes interesting drama.

I love sentences. I love characters. But most of all, perhaps, I love to work on plot, and that may be where my natural gifts lie, if I have any. I like to think hard about plots in TV shows and films.

I have a very healthy appetite for good writing and good characters. Having weak writing is my biggest fear.

The story is the only thing that's important. Everything else will take care of itself. It's like what bowlers say. You hear writers talk about character or theme or mood or mode or tense or person. But bowlers say, if you make the spares, the strikes will take care of themselves. If you can tell a story, everything else becomes possible. But without story, nothing is possible, because nobody wants to hear about your sensitive characters if there's nothing happening in the story. And the same is true with mood. Story is the only thing that's important.

My characters, I find them as I'm writing. It's quite incredible how fully realized they are in my mind, how many details I know about each of them.

A comic book is the opposite of a cartoon. In a cartoon, you want to simplify the idea, so when they look at it at a glance, they get it. Boom. Simple. Direct to the point. But when you're drawing Groo, now it's a narrative, a story. You want the viewer to get involved in the story. You want him to feel like he's in the town to follow your main character. So I love to add lots and lots of things in it. Things that people will enjoy going back to and say, "Oh yeah, that's how a market must have looked in this fantasy world, with people selling meat here and dishes here."

Characters make their own plot. The dimensions of the characters determine the action of the novel.

I think there's a false division people sometimes make in describing literary novels, where there are people who write systems novels, or novels of ideas, and there are people who write about emotional things in which the movement is character driven. But no good novels are divisible in that way.

Being an author means, almost by definition, that you make up characters and then complicate their lives. That's it, really. You make up characters and give them problem after problem after problem.

The main reason for rewriting is not to achieve a smooth surface, but to discover the inner truth of your characters.

Maybe I'm perverse, but the question of "rooting" for a character, or setting out to write a character for whom other people will root, has never had anything to do with why I read or write fiction. As long as the writing and story remain alive, intense, invigorating, provoking, the characters can be as demonic or saintly as the author wants.

Authors have to write for their characters, for who they are, that's the strength of books. Don't worry about censors. Just write the story you need to tell and the rewards will come.

When you find theater writing like in the theater on film but it's realistic, it doesn't matter who the character is, you want to do it.