J. Michael Straczynski Quotes

Your opening should give the reader a person to focus on. In a short story, this person should turn up almost immediately; he should be integral to the story's main action; he should be an individual, not just a type. In a novel, the main character may take longer to appear: Anna Karenina doesn't show up in her own novel until chapter eighteen.

I have absolutely no interest in playing the young male lead around which a story happens.

The idea behind 'Gloria' was to take a secondary character - the aunt, the mother - and stay with her as she becomes our protagonist.

Basically, fiction is people. You can't write fiction about ideas.

If a movie has more characters than an audience can keep track of, the audience will get confused and lose interest in the story.

My stories are character driven.

I feel like any actor should always be thinking about how to serve the story. The thing to be cautious of is trying to make too much of your 'moment,' or whatever. The story is a lot bigger than you, and you're there to help it along.

Coming from TV and film, rule number one is that you always service the main character first and foremost. If that's not working, you've got nothing.

I don't do issue writing. I do character writing.

I think the danger in trying to set too many things up or do too much world-building in a movie so soon is you forget to actually make a movie.

It's very important that all the supporting characters feel like they've existed in the world, that they've had a history, and they'll go on to have a history within the scope of the story rather than just popping up and then disappearing.

I've always kind of gravitated toward characters who are a bit distant from the narrator or the point-of-view characters, so that's kind of important to me, to set up a different character who would be the point-of-view character for the story.

My only criteria while selecting roles is that it should be a lead part in an interesting story where the character has depth and layers.

For me, any story I tackle begins with the human relationships and not the plot.

We are writing fiction, but we are trying to create a world that's believable.

I tend to lean toward romance, characters, and relationships when I write, so I have to add to the setting elements and world-building when I revise.

I don't normally think of a specific actor. I concentrate on the character, and then when we get into pre-production, that's how names come up.

I believe there are aspects of the narrative that become easier to understand by shifting the focus of the story to the characters. Illustrating growth and change in the protagonist becomes a simpler process, and these changes are, in fact, one of the themes of 'Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice''s story.

'Star Wars' novels that focus on a single character are few and far between.

I don't mind playing a mom, but if I'm just somebody in someone else's love story, then I'm not interested.

I'm a lot more focused on character development and showing more of my character's emotions and persona inside the ring rather than just going move after move after move.

I'm always excited about stories that allow me to explore a character and create interesting stories and worlds that we haven't seen before.

With supporting roles, you just want really good actors that can make it bigger than what's there.

On 'Master of None,' the majority of the episodes were just one story, and that was by design because we really wanted to focus in on the character of Dev and get the audience in his head.

It's always important to try and get a real sense of the world around my characters. I especially think it helps actors.