The key to high concept is that fresh twist. Make it a big one. Wow your reader. Force her to gasp when she comes to that part in your story.
I love a big, character-rich story with a dark heart, with a compelling mystery or some kind of ticking clock at its center. I want to be lured in by prose, captured by character, and bound by stellar plotting to keep turning the pages.
And I like being able to go back and forth, and I don't really care if it's a small budget or big budget or studio or independent, as long as it's got a story that's compelling and there's enough money to make the picture.
'The Piano Lesson' is very sophisticated, easily the most adult or complex material I've attempted. It's the first film I've written that has a proper story, and it was a big struggle for me to write. It meant I had to admit the power of narrative.
Senior Ed Bloom: I've told you a thousand facts, Will, that's what I do. I tell stories. Will Bloom: You tell lies, Dad.
I had a financial page to write in the Mail on Sunday where I'd give tips on shares. I worked there for two and a half years. Nothing compares to the burst of energy felt on a newsroom floor when a big story breaks.
There is a certain comfort in waking up and finding that Michael Jackson is still the Big Story. At least it tells you that nothing horrible has happened in the world that would force them to move on to real news.
If you're big in Montreal, you're big in Quebec. If you're big in Toronto, you're big in Canada. But if you're big in New York, you're big in the rest of the world.
One of the problems with all of this is that not all narratives are equal. Imagine, to take a silly example, that someone told you story after story extolling the virtues of eating dog shit. You've been told these stories since you were a child. You ...
The thing is, all memory is fiction. You have to remember that. Of course, there are things that actually, certifiably happened, things you can pinpoint the day, the hour, the minute. When you think about it, though, those things, mostly seem to happ...
I mean, sports are big, big, big business.
A lot of artists start out as failed poets, then move on to being failed short-story writers before they finally break through to the big time and become failed novelists.
It was an obsession, it was a compulsion. "The way to banish temptation is to give into it," the saying went. Maybe if she experienced a gangbang, it wouldn't be such a big deal, and would no longer be the focus of her sexual imagination.
It’s a huge thing, this Shift, just as big as I imagined. My brain doesn’t want to think anymore; all of a sudden it wants to do.
People don't want their lives fixed. Nobody wants their problems solved. Their dramas. their distractions. Their stories resolved. Their messes cleaned up. Because what would they have left? Just the big scary unknown.
While many of my musicals deal with big themes and ideas, I don't intentionally go looking to write shows like that. A story will interest me, and then somewhere along the way, I discover that hidden inside are these epic themes.
Do you think you’re not ‘ready’ to start that big story idea/project you’ve been thinking about forever? Jump in. Write anyway. The only way to make the impossible a reality is to take a leap of faith.
I have always been a big meta guy because I think the way journalism is practiced in Washington, and the way everyone sort of cohabitates in the same fishbowl is ultimately a bigger part of the story than people outside of the fishbowl really know.
My big subject as a historian is how Americans divide themselves. What are the divisions that structure our political lives. Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan were perfect foils for that story.
For 'Prometheus,' I came back to a very simple question that haunted me that appears in the first 'Alien,' and no one answered in subsequent Alien films: who was the 'Space Jockey' - the big guy in the seat? If you really go into that, it becomes the...
When I'm engaged in a story my health is not a big deal, but when I'm not doing anything, if you sit me down, I can get tied up in my own medical dramas. So I much prefer to work.
