Character Conflict Quotes

This isn't a competitive sport. Wrestling is not the NFL or the NHL. It's not really sports. It's entertainment. And in order to be entertaining, you have to create emotion. And you can't create emotion by simply having a wrestling match.

When you're writing a team book where every character already has his or her own series, you don't have dominion over them as individuals - but what you can exploit is their relationships with one another.

I think action should be revealed through character, so if you have a plot problem, it's probably a character problem.

I believe the most intricate plot won't matter much to readers if they don't care about the characters, especially in a series. So I try to focus hard on making each character, whether villain or hero, have an interesting flaw that readers can relate to.

Movies are about people; there're not about ideas. It's like great novels. Great novels are not about ideas. There's never been a great novel about ideas.

In 'Charade,' there was a big fight. George Kennedy was playing one of his first big heavy roles; he had a hook for a hand, and he was real ugly. Cary Grant was Cary Grant. They were on a slanted roof, a very exciting fight, and we agreed there shouldn't be any music, just the grunts and the action.

To me, it all comes down to things being character-driven. It's hard for me to look beyond that. CG and all this cool stuff - so be it. But to me, it pretty much begins and ends with character-driven plots rather than technologically-driven plots.

When I was on 'One Life to Live,' I always wanted to delve into my character, Layla, to find out why she was the black sheep of the family. I so wanted to have some edge. I have no idea why there was a reluctance to do that or why we so rarely see it.

I just thought 'Blue' was a great premise and a great set-up for conflict. I love the idea of exploring a character who's living a secret life and is going to drown in the lies she's telling.

I don't know if likeable, pleasant characters have enough conflict for me to want to do them. I admire those people, but I've never been that kind of screen presence who can do nothing. I need to do something.

I really enjoy 'Mad Men,' but I'm hugely into 'Homeland.' The characters are very well drawn and complex.

For me, plot always comes out of character, so I had to be sure of my characters.

It's one thing to not want an evil-sorcerer type villain in your story, but it's another thing to avoid having any sort of antagonist at all. A story without an antagonist gets weird pretty quick.

I don't care if it's a mystery story, a Western, or the story of Julius Caesar. To me it's the emotion, the lies, the double-cross, whether it's Brutus doing it to Caesar or Bob Stack doing it to Robert Ryan that defines what kind of drama it is.

I like conflict, drama's conflict and if you don't have that in the character it's really not a worthwhile role to play for me.

Actually, I find it great fun to develop family series with lots of characters.

The Amateur Marriage grew out of the reflection that of all the opportunities to show differences in character, surely an unhappy marriage must be the richest.

I love characters that are going through turmoil. To be honest, I love characters with conflict. I love characters who are really going through an emotional journey; whether it's a super-dark-crazy journey or a really relatable guy.

My main problem with fiction is that once my characters get moving, you just have to follow them along and get out of the way of the story, but sometimes they pull me in too many directions, and I need to focus.

Any time I break up with Dawson or question him, viewers turn against me.

Sometimes I feel that in religious content, religious drama, it's almost told like a tale, like an account of facts, and in 'A.D. The Bible Continues,' it's drama, it's real drama that we like to see on TV today, seeing the characters struggle and doubt and be completely in conflict with each other, kind of like 'House of Cards.'

Usually the characters are where I start. Then I continually ask myself, 'What's the worst thing that could happen to this character?'

It's always most interesting when Batman starts out as that lone Dark Knight and then is forced to have to interact with someone else, whether it's Dick Grayson or Damian Wayne or anybody else, and deal with their pesky personalities.

I believe a good writer can write a good book with any sort of character, in any sort of setting, but I prefer to write about the outsider. It might just be because I've been one (or perceived myself to be one) for so much of my life. But the simple fact of being marginalized immediately brings conflict to a story before the narrative even begins, and that's gold for a writer because it means that your character already has depth before events begin to unfold.

I think what 'Emmerdale' are excited about is that my exit storyline is the catalyst for other storylines for characters like Chrissie and Lawrence.