Storytelling Nuance Quotes

Having been raised by actors who love moral ambiguity and flawed protagonists, I feel like it's sort of in the blood to want to take it on.

As much as movies are about the words that you're saying, they're also about what's not said, the silent moments.

Sometimes a scene may be about one thing, and it may end up still being about that, but the emotionality of it comes from somewhere else, or the humor of it comes from somewhere else, and it gives it that real-life quality.

You don't need a love scene to show love.

To me, a story can be both concrete and abstract, or a concrete story can hold abstractions. And abstractions are things that really can't be said so well with words.

You really have to be careful with the clues you lay into the film - if they're too heavy-handed, or you've pandered to a slightly stupider audience, then you've spoiled it for the people who are even slightly smart.

When it comes to films, people often don't differentiate between the message of a bad central character and the message of the film itself. They are two separate things.

Things either become unclear in a story or they're just ambiguous with no real point. So defined gray area with clarity that also works in the narrative, that's tricky.

Cinema is much more than heroes and villains.

Myths are seldom simple, and never irresponsible.

Details are the only thing that separates one movie from another.

If a theme or idea is too near the surface, the novel becomes simply a tract illustrating an idea.

In some sense, there is no such thing as writing for children.

If you're playing someone who has lived, there's the risk of imitation, or whether you focus on the essence of who that character was as opposed to physical mannerisms. So, you have to figure out what it is ultimately that this particular adaptation of the story, whether it's fiction or not, is trying to say.

Our story is a 'once upon a time', but it's not a 'happy ever after'.

For me, as a writer who comes from quite a naturalistic tradition, British screenwriting is quite delicate, quite small, and rarified in a way.

You don't want to hit readers over the head like they're completely incapable of picking up on subtlety.

I wanted to write a novel where the meaning is in the story and characters and the subliminal, in the shades and nuances. It's exciting to develop that as a writer.

It's as boring to see a completely evil villain as it is to see a completely good guy.

I feel like in telling stories, there are the things the audience thinks are important, and then there are the things that are actually important.

Characters should on the whole, be under rather than over articulate. What they intend to say should be more evident, more striking (because of its greater inner importance to the plot) than what they arrive at saying.

Most of the books and films I love walk a knife edge between romance and cynicism, and I wanted 'One Day' to stay on that line. I wanted it to be moving, but without being manipulative.

I always try to look at the episode overall, and try to figure out where I can add something that's a little ironic or self-aware or light because I think that's what makes the show special.

What's the fun in approaching something closed-minded? I'm very specific; if dialogue is too on-the-nose, or there's a lot of telling and not showing, I'll talk to my manager and let them know the problems I have with it. But, I always go in with fresh eyes. The first pass just needs to be about figuring out little things here and there.

When romances do really teach anything, or produce any effective operation, it is usually through a far more subtle process than the ostensible one. The author has considered it hardly worth his while, therefore, relentlessly to impale the story with its moral as with an iron rod-or, rather, as by sticking a pin through a butterfly-thus at once depriving it of life, and causing it to stiffen in an ungainly and unnatural attitude.