The key to any good sports story is identifying the defining moment. In football games or a boxing match, it's usually pretty obvious. But in golf, sometimes it happens on Thursday. Usually it's Sunday, but guys who don't know the game, they can miss...
I went back to the notion of story, which is always a good thing to have if you're trying to get people to pay attention to a book and pick up information along the way.
I read all these stories that I don't know anything about politics. But I must know something. I've had some good victories in Congress, and I've survived this town for four years.
I'm just trying to write a good story, strictly from imagination. People just think it's random, they don't see the rewriting, phrasing of characters, choosing the words, bringing the world to light in which the characters live in. That creates an il...
A good story will keep you wondering about what's happening, what's going on, where does this go? Now it's going to go that way, now it's going to go that way. It has to do that. If it's predictable, it's just boring.
It was always a dream as I was growing up. I would watch movies, mostly American movies, and be so engrossed in those stories, all I wanted to do was be there. I wanted to be part of that romance or that fantasy or be that warrior or that struggling ...
Many people tell me that they don 't know what to feel when they finish one of my books because the story was dark, or complicated, or strange. But while they were reading it, they were inside my world and they were happy. That's good.
There is sometimes a feeling in crime fiction that good writing gets in the way of story. I have never felt that way. All you have is language. Why write beneath yourself? It's an act of respect for the reader as much as yourself.
In Hollywood if you're good looking, tall, have okay teeth and nice skin, the odds of being successful are great. If you're short and fat, it's a different story. But as long as you look like a leading man type, half your job is done already.
I put on such a good show, the story is outrageous, and people don't want to hear that I'm basically a reasonable human being. As long as it continues to get me print, I'll continue to perform in an exuberant manner.
You have to live what you write, or you have to know it. There are exceptions, like story songs, where you just have to have your facts straight. But I think you don't have to live a hard life to be a good or interesting songwriter.
It's all about story and character with me, and I don't care if the job is on daytime or prime time or the web. Hey, give me a good character and someone to listen, and I'll do my acting on a street corner.
I believe in plot, in development of character, in the effect of the passage of time, in a good story - better than something you might find in the newspaper. And I believe a novel should be as complicated and involved as you're capable of making it.
I have an immigrant story. Most people come here for economic reasons, or religious reasons, or racial reasons, or gender reasons, or one of those things. I had a good job in Paris, but America was, and still is, the golden fleece. And I've done very...
For most Americans, Friday afternoons are filled with positive anticipation of the weekend. In Washington, it's where government officials dump stories they want to bury. Good news gets dropped on Monday so bureaucrats can talk about it all week.
The important thing about any book is that you have to have a good story and that it has to be exciting. Then it's nice to add other levels underneath that people can pick up on.
'The Master' with Joaquin Phoenix puts up a good fight, but my favorite movie of all time is 'The Wizard of Oz.' I just love it. I watched it over and over again as a child, and I think it has all the elements of wonder, and it's a beautiful story.
Local television is a slightly different story. It is under much more pressure in the same way that all local businesses are, whether that's a local newspaper, local radio or local television. But I think television in the aggregate is actually in ve...
I wasn't really a dark kid, but I was in my head a lot. I got good grades all through my 16 years of Catholic school, but I was always writing these weird - and, I have to say, really bad - stories, filled with murder.
There are always reasons for people's behaviour, and it's easy just to dismiss them and assume that we already know their story, especially if they're no good at showing their emotions. Life gives you all these knocks, it's so easy to form a shell to...
I do think novels are overlooked. I did write one some years ago that I think is quite good, called 'The End of the Story,' not to blow my own horn.
