I'm a Hollywood kid, and I know that there are only so many stories. Only so many tales around the campfire that we have to tell. Then we have to regurgitate them. Our grandparents' movies were all remakes of silent films - we forget that, but it's t...
I'm very opinionated about movie musicals when they're adapted from live shows. You'll sit still for a three-minute song in a theater. But in movies, a glance from someone's eyes will tell you the whole story in a few seconds.
Bernadette: [after Felicia tells Bernadette about her ABBA story] What are you telling me? This is an ABBA turd?
Ben Fong-Torres: [reading William's story] "I'm flying high over Tupelo, Mississippi... with America's hottest band... and we're all about to die." - Dark, lively.
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.
Al Stephenson: I think that, uh, little story has considerable significance; but I've, uh, I've forgotten what it is.
A story isn't a charcoal sketch, where every stroke lies on the surface to be seen. It's an oil painting, filled with layers that the author must uncover so carefully to show its beauty.
Novels are so much unrulier and more stressful to write. A short story can last two pages and then it's over, and that's kind of a relief. I really like balancing the two.
The epic implications of being human end in more than this: We start our lives as if they were momentous stories, with a beginning, a middle and an appropriate end, only to find that they are mostly middles.
I often compare putting a hotel together to old-time movie production. You come up with a story line, you hire the writer, the director, the stars, the set designer.
("we appreciated the intricately thought-out, detailed universe you've created for your story." ~Arthur A. Levine Books (publishers of The Harry Potter series.)) about my book!
I was not aware of how much I loved 'Canoa' until I saw it after doing 'Y Tu Mama Tambien' and realized that my voice - over about the story's historical context - that narrator - came from 'Canoa'.
My buddy tells me a lot of interesting stories about what goes on in prison - it just makes my head spin about what they deal with on a day-to-day basis.
Doctors are human animals. They want to be loved, they are tribal, they instinctually favor stories over scientific evidence, they make mistakes, and even small gifts make them susceptible to being biased.
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.
I was always at heart a novelist and wanted to tell a bigger story, so I wanted to create people who told other kinds of truths than literal truths.
Because when you go out, and you have fun, basically you're performing for these tabloid outlets and the paparazzi. And when you perform and create this story, they're chuffed - they get excited, they capture it, and they put it out.
I've written original material before, where I've come up with the idea and the characters myself, and that's definitely very different to working with someone else's characters and stories.
Most American Jews came from the lower middle classes, and therefore they brought with them not a lot of Jewish culture. The American Jewish story starts with Ellis Island, and the candy store in the Bronx.
It's also possible to have two third person singular points of view, as represented by two characters through whose eyes the story is told in alternating chapters, say.
The thing is, emotion - if it's visibly felt by the writer - will go through all the processes it takes to publish a story and still hit the reader right in the gut. But you have to really mean it.
