I wanted to write a new fable and see how many rules you could break.
With musical theatre, although there are rules, they're so different to the ones I feel like I have accidentally been ingrained with writing pop music. The main point is to tell the story. You just have to make sure the character's voice is strong and the storytelling is strong.
I think it's always good not to listen to what the rules are supposed to be about the arc of the character and the third acts and all this stuff.
We live in a society that is in transition from oral to written. There are oral stories that are still there, not exactly in their full magnificence, but still strong in their differentness from written stories. Each mode has its ways and methods and rules. They can reinforce each other; this is the advantage my generation has - we can bring to the written story something of that energy of the story told by word of mouth.
I think anything goes in fiction as long as it fits within the interior logic of the work itself and is presented in a disciplined manner.
The thing about fantasy - there are certain things you just don't do in fantasy.
As with all types of writing, fantastical fiction depends on the same basic rules.
I believe when you're writing film or television, you can't rely on a crutch or rule that exists outside of the narrative of the film.
Do you solemnly swear never to conceal a vital clue from the reader? Do you promise to observe seemly moderation in the use of gangs, conspiracies, Super Criminals and Lunatics and utterly and forever to forswear Mysterious Poisons unknown to science? Will you honor the King's English? ... If you fail to keep your promise, may other writers steal your plots and your pages swarm with misprints.
When writing, you can't break physical rules. You can't have people come back from the dead. That's cheating. I am a kind of narrative fundamentalist in many ways.
For many decades - and this was reinforced by the broadcast networks' standards-and-practices department - bad guys on TV had to get their comeuppance, and good guys had to be brave and true and unconflicted. Those were the laws of the business.
A funny thing about film is that it's the only medium where people say there are really rules that you have to stick to. Nobody says to the writer - in a film you've got to have three acts - there's a character arc you have to do - there's no reason that's true.
'100 Bullets' is such a post-modern noir; there are certain rules you gotta follow.
With any sci-fi fantasy storytelling, you must have rules be very clear, otherwise you lose people, like 'OK, they can fly; now they can't fly.'
In comic strips, the person on the left always speaks first.
You can do weird things on TV - there are happy stories, sad stories, dark stories. But with a movie, it always has to end satisfying. Unless you're the Coen brothers, and it ends with somebody getting shot in the head.
You don't need to like your protagonists.
I think everybody is allowed, especially when they're telling a story, as long as it's not based on somebody's real life, you're allowed a certain liberty.
