Story Background Quotes

When I first started, my novels were set in the far future.

I knew Berlin would have to become a kind of character in my new book, 'In the Garden of Beasts'. I had felt likewise about Chicago when I wrote 'The Devil in the White City' and Galveston with 'Isaac's Storm'.

I often think of setting as an important character in my story. 'Dark Powers' takes place in Doncaster, a Maryland Eastern Shore community rich with watermen and historic atmosphere. I modeled it after a stunning little town called St. Michaels, but since a lot of bad things happen in Doncaster, I changed the name.

We really liked the magic of 'Harry Potter' and 'The Lord of the Rings,' but we could never figure out where the powers came from.

To be honest, I think I would like a really fun, quirky character with an interesting background.

For 'The Gift of Stones,' I spent an afternoon chasing a flock of Canadian geese.

I read the 'Nightflyers' novella and knowing that it was something that had been written by George R.R. Martin, knowing how those stories kind of go, I was really curious to see what happened to my character in the source material.

I've never read Joseph Campbell, and I don't know all that much about story archetypes.

All my novels are rooted in their time and in their place.

It's great that the story [Allied] is set in the '40s because the '40s feel to it is completely appropriate.

If there is a book that the script came from you have to read it, you have to see what you can get out of it: mood, back story and things that may not even be in the film. They kick off your imagination and broaden the character, I think.

We wanted it to be that you could go to the comic shop and read about the back story of 'Pacific Rim' and the drama inherent in it.

I go for drives in the Flint Hills, which is the setting for 'The Virgin of Small Plains'.

I guess what led to me writing 'Holes' was having moved to Texas in 1991, and it was sort of my reaction to Texas.

Before the reader is introduced to the modest country medical practitioner who is to be the chief personage of the following tale, it will be well that he should be made acquainted with some particulars as to the locality in which, and the neighbours among whom, our doctor followed his profession.

The benefit of having a story that takes place in the real world is that you don't have to invent the real world. It exists.

A director can come from anywhere, but having a story background, if you have nothing else, is probably a good thing to have because it's really the one tool you need.

I think the toughest thing for me to figure out, as an actor, was how to translate all those layers that are in there and that history that the writers have done such a great job at forming.