John Lasseter Quotes

Every movie has three things you have to do - you have to have a compelling story that keeps people on the edge of their seats; you have to populate that story with memorable and appealing characters; and you have to put that story and those characters in a believable world. Those three things are so vitally important.

You have to think about good storytelling and characters first. Then hopefully, the rest of that stuff will follow, some more than others. But if you don't have a good film and strong characters, then you don't have anything down the road.

It was unpredictable, good storytelling that brought you back each week.

I think kids want the same thing from a book that adults want - a fast-paced story, characters worth caring about, humor, surprises, and mystery. A good book always keeps you asking questions, and makes you keep turning pages so you can find out the answers.

Comedy, drama, Westerns, sci-fi... it's all fine if the story's compelling and the character is interesting to me. I do like action a lot.

I think the tricky balance, the most important thing more than the horror is to have a compelling story, compelling drama, a show about great characters that you care about and you want to come back every week to see what they're up to.

The first rule is you have to create a reality that makes the reader want to come back and see what happens next. The way I tried to do it, I'd create characters that the reader could instantly recognize, and hopefully bond with, and put them through situations that keep the reader on the edge of their seat.

Delicious... Everything I'd hoped for in a new Wild Cards book. The character interactions and plot twists have exactly the complexity, surprise, and unsentimental realism I'd expect out of a George R. R. Martin project.

For those of us at Marvel Television, it always begins with the story. It's all about the script. It's making sure it's there, on the page. So, we needed to go to a group of individuals who have not only created some of the most memorable animated characters, like Ben 10 and Generator Rex, but also had done two seasons of our very successful Marvel's Ultimate Spider-Man series, and that's the Man of Action guys. But, it wasn't just that.

Everything you could want - action, suspense, character and setting, all floating on the easy lyricism of a fine writer at the top of his game.

Kids, if anything, are harder to write for because they are a more discerning audience. They will not stay with you if you go off on a tangent or if you give them extraneous information that doesn't serve the story. You really have to tell a tight story. You have to give them humor and suspense and believable characters. All those things that adults want too, but you have to be really on your game when you're writing for kids.

Sarah Cornwell has a brilliant eye for the telling detail, and a wonderfully original way of embodying family history. I was captivated by her memorable characters and the perfectly paced revelations of their surprising relationships.

You can make a beautiful, airtight world that's fascinating to look at, but it's not interesting unless you have a character that's trying to achieve something under the circumstances of that world. It's harder to play a wacky girlfriend whose journey you just don't understand.

I like stories that grow, that have unpredictable layers. As opposed to Hollywood movies that start out with a lot of shock and noise and peter out into an unconvincing cliche.

I see a lot of scripts, and very few of them leap off the page at you.

I think I like reluctant protagonists.

If your character is written well and is meaty enough, even two scenes has the potential to stand out.

I remember on 'Jug Face' working with Chad Crawford Kinkle, who is as sweet as they come. He told me someone had given him advice that if you're making a drama, you basically need to put your main protagonist through living hell in every scene, and then you'll have a successful film. He laughed it off until watching me every day!

The one thing we pride ourselves on the most with writing 'Car Share' is that it's hard to predict what's going to happen and that's hard to achieve, especially with comedy.

It always comes down to script and characters.

I do like books to be quite an intense experience, and that's the kind of novel I respond to as a reader.

My goal as a novelist is to create smart entertainment, books that keep bright people up too late, that make them want to read just one more chapter. Books that have ideas threaded in amidst the thrilling bits, ideas that I hope linger even after people close the book.

The characters are the plot. What they do and say and the things that happen to them are, in a sense, what the plot is. You can't take character and plot apart from each other, really.

I want to go and have a real experience and it's just lovely to sit and watch a movie and just be really transported by a story and care about the characters. That's always what I'm looking for.

If a scene doesn't work on three levels - it's not advancing the story, the characters, and telling me something new - then put it in the trash.