Steven Zaillian Quotes

I might spend 100 pages trying to get to know the world I'm writing about: its contours, who are my main characters, what are their relationships to each other, and just trying to get a sense of what and who this book is about. Usually around that point of 100 pages, I start to feel like I'm lost, I have too much material, it's time to start making some choices. It's typically at that point that I sit down and try to make a formal outline and winnow out what's not working and what I'm most interested in, where the story seems to be going.

Stories, as much as we like to talk about them, retrospectively, as emanations of theme or worldview or intention, occur primarily as technical objects when they're being written. Or at least they do for me. They're the result of thousands of decisions made at speed during revision.

Sometimes I'll ask the book writer to write a monologue, not to be performed, just as if they were notes for the character.

The only way I could finish a book and get a plot was just to keep making it longer until something happens.

Certainly, for me, and it's gone this way on every project I've worked on, the "writing" never ends until you're done with the movie.

Every day, I learn something new. I think one of the most exciting things for a writer is to work on a TV show. It's like a novel. You have a really long time to develop and learn about the characters, and you can just really keep digging in deeper, every week.

One thing about writing 'The Sarah Silverman Program' was the concern that I don't give myself the best story, you know what I mean?

I start with characters, and then I start writing, and then, if I'm lucky, things start to happen.

If I just sit here, what am I going to do? I don't have a trade. I don't teach or anything. I just love to make up characters and gradually build a story around them.

In the summer of 2010, I had decided to get into film and TV writing, so I wrote scripts for six different ideas I had developed, and the pilot for 'True Detective' was one of them.

The unfolding of a story is both as exciting and as difficult for each and every novel I've written, regardless of time and place.

By the time I wrote 'Any Given Sunday' or 'Bats,' I sort of knew what my job was in terms of what a writer of dialogue does.

I find getting the first draft down to be the biggest challenge. Every word, every punctuation mark, every plot point is a decision. It's much more fun to play with something that already exists.

When I'm writing a first draft of a script, I can disappear into that for two, three months exclusively.

First and foremost, it's got to be on the page. It starts with the writing.

For me, writing is a part of directing. It's the first stage of directing.

I like having an idea, or hearing an idea, and getting it into a proper script.

Acting is probably what I'm best at, but there are certain stories kind of rattling around in my head that I like the idea of developing over time.

No author can create a character out of nothing. He must have a model to give him a starting point; but then his imagination goes to work, he builds him up, adding a trait here, a trait there, which his model did not possess.

For me, there's a bad year of getting started on something. You write bad stuff and it's awkward to throw it out, and you wait around to get some good ideas that maybe do come or don't come. Until eventually you get the voice and autonomy of the characters, the characters have personality, and they sort of pick up the weight and put it on their shoulders. That's when it becomes a little more fun.

Although I'm very lazy when it comes to writing, I'm not that lazy when it comes to thinking. I like to develop the plan of a short story, then cut it as short as possible, try to evolve all the necessary details. I know far more about the characters than what actually comes out of the writing.

I would say plotting is the most difficult thing for me. Characterization is only hard because sometimes I feel I get so interested in it that I want to talk too much about the characters and that slows the story down. So I say, "Hey, people want to find out what's going to happen next, they don't want to listen to you spout off about this or that person." But I think even the bad guy deserves to tell his side of the story.

I'm fond of all my characters so every time one doesn't make the cut I'm a little disappointed although I understand it.

I enjoy writing scripts. I can find out what happens. With an outline, I feel like I'm doing an architectural diagram of something.

A lot of people think that they are really cool because they don't outline. In my writing group, they would say, "I will never outline. I let the characters take me." C'mon, man - I outline the story, but it's only like one page. It's a list of possible reversals in the story, like things where everything will just change because of this certain reveal or this certain action. Then I start really digging into the character because, to me, I don't care what the story is.