Genre Conventions Quotes

I never let the technical stuff get in the way of the storytelling.

I think, specifically with the horror genre, you have to make it very believable because it can come across ridiculous.

Good genre movies are a little bit like trying to write a haiku. There are certain things that you have to do to fulfill the audience's expectations, but inside that, you have complete freedom to talk about whatever you want. Who wants to see a movie about gun violence in America and class? But, if you set it in this terrifying, fun, roller coaster ride of a movie, you can talk about whatever you want. That's been the game that genre movies play, when they do it well.

In the studio system, things are expected of a film. By the first, second, third act, there's a generic language that comes out of the more commercial system.

Of course I know what works for me and what kind of tone I want my films to have.

No matter how big or new they are, I always look for the intention of the filmmaker first. Their intention has to be in the right place.

The difference between fiction and nonfiction is that fiction must be absolutely believable.

Anybody can write a film script 'cuz it has been reduced to a formula.

I loved writing a book in which, in some ways, it's very, very classical, and in some ways I'm breaking lots of rules about what you can do and what you can't do.

I think a film noir demands a beginning and an end.

Writing a screenplay is like writing a big puzzle, and so the hardest part, I think, is getting the story.

In 'Windtalkers,' the director John Woo is meticulous in melding his own intimate style into the cliches of a large-scale war movie, paying homage to all the tired conventions of the genre. But it's an honor that these cliches don't deserve.

Writing a first novel was an arduous crash course. I learned so much in the six years it took me to write it, mostly technical things pertaining to craft.

A number of people have read 'Two-Way Split' and made certain assumptions about what the author's like, and I'm highly disappointing to them. I don't drink, I don't eat meat; that's very disappointing for a hard-boiled writer.

When aspiring writers ask me about how they should target their writing, I tell them to pay no attention to that kind of thing. It will restrict you. You will end up falling into stereotypes in an effort to tailor your work toward a perceived genre category.

In a science fiction movie, the first act is a little longer than it is in most movies because there is so much world building to do.

Many thrillers follow such reliable formulas that you can look at what's happening and guess how much longer a film has to run.

Being a wannabe auteur and my favorite filmmakers being part of the dead canon of European, Japanese art-house masters, I want to say that I don't want to care about genre and how it's limiting and all of that stuff.

In a zombie apocalypse movie, nobody's ever seen a zombie movie. Or in an alien invasion movie, nobody has ever seen an alien invasion movie, like 'Independence Day.'

I don't have a specific message for 'The Grace of Kings' and the sequels in mind other than wanting to challenge some of the source material I was working from as well as some of the assumptions of epic fantasy.

I think a lot of police procedurals are very conventional. With the stuff I'm doing, I'm trying to approach the institution of the police in a different way.

People wanted to get me published, and my early work was so weird that they weren't getting anywhere. I thought, okay, I'll do something that's just a tad more normal.

People know where romantic comedies are going. It's not brain surgery to figure out the end of a romantic comedy.

A comedy ends with a wedding, and a tragedy ends with a funeral: you always have to juxtapose sex and death.

On the craft level, writing for children is not so different from writing for adults. You still have to have a story that moves forward. You still have to have the tools of the trade down. The difference arises in the knowledge of who you're writing for. This isn't necessary true of writing for adults.