Maria Semple Quotes

Writing a TV show is totally different than writing features, or just, what I started doing is writing features. You write a little bit more organically. You start from the beginning to the end, beginning, middle and end.

The few times I've tried to write original screenplays, it's a difficult process because I just don't feel like I know the characters the way I know them after the year or two it takes to write a novel.

The cool thing about Kyle Killen, he writes really defined characters. I was a big fan of 'Awake' and also 'Lone Star.' I just think that he's a really, really special writer, and complex and deep, and a really smart dude.

It's fun to improvise, but I still think it's better to have a great script, you know, like a Charlie Kaufman script.

In television writing, you want to hear what the characters say as opposed to giving them something to say. It's the same with the cartoons.

My preference is for good writing. It doesn't matter if it's for film or TV. Whatever. It starts with the writing. Even though I've had problems with writers, it doesn't matter how great of an actor you are. If the writing is bad, you're going to struggle.

I'm crazy about 'Breaking Bad,' but I wouldn't know how to write an episode of it.

As far as the creative side, the more I do this, the more I know that it's all about the writing. We don't always celebrate that enough, but without the writing, you can't do much. You got on a film sometimes, and it's sort of half-written, and they expect and think that the actor's job is to bring the extra part and the good part. It's not.

It was really fun to start writing movies because you could actually take characters whose voice you enjoy writing in and have actual things happen to them for more than five minutes. It was really fun to thread it together.

It always comes down to script and characters.

When you're writing for a show, you're writing part of the script. You have to tell the story.

A good TV writer needs all the same tricks a good novelist has.

I often attribute my screenwriting to journalism because they drill in the who, what, when, where and why - but we really need to land on that why. That's what I've been exploring in my writing for many years and trying to get better at.

To combine telling an interesting story with brilliantly written characters is the most difficult thing to do.

Writers often say that characters begin to write themselves, and I never used to believe that. I always thought that was complete hogwash.

I'm a novelist, so I can't write about ideas unless they're attached to people.

I am not an analytical writer. Once I flesh out my characters and decide on the elements of my plot, the story unfolds in my head almost as though it was a movie reel.

I'm consistently blown away by 'Mad Men.' Having spent so much time in the writers' room, I'm cursed in that anytime I watch something, I'm always calculating what the writers are up to.

When I first read the script a few years ago I thought it was one of the best written scripts I had ever read.

I love writing letters. In order to write a novel in first person, I think I needed an addressee.

When you write, you hear the characters speaking to you as you take dictation from what they say. And obviously, they had particular personalities when you hear them.

At the end of the day, it's really, really difficult to make a brand-new show, to write a pilot where you have to introduce characters and everyone has to kind of be dynamic and have something different for themselves.

If you get a script and it's really well written, that's always exciting.

I always say I write my own novels and the characters don't take control of me, but in fact, I look at the characters in the early stages and I think, 'What is he or she like,' and they slowly come together and they become the person they are.

We start with strong characters and build the movie from there. That not to say we don't struggle with story - that's the most challenging part.