I tend to wait for true stories to mature into fiction. Most of my fiction grew out of a long-germinating real-life situation.
I'm not first and foremost interested in story and the what-happens, but I'm interested in who's telling it and how they're telling it and the effects of whatever happened on the characters and the people.
There's something very strange about Sherlock Holmes, especially if you're an English schoolboy. When you read the stories, they stay with you forever.
As a matter of writing philosophy, if there is one, I try not to ever plot a story. I try to write it from the character's point of view and see where it goes.
That's the worst way you can hear about comedy material: from a third person's blog story that they wrote when they were upset.
The urge to create a fictional narrative is a mysterious one, and when an idea comes, the writer's sense of what a story wants to be is only vaguely visible through the penumbra of inspiration.
But Ship Who Sang remains my favorite story. I really rocked folks with that and still cannot read it aloud myself without weeping at the end.
Everyone working on 'Tyrant' wants to present the world and the issues in it in an intelligent, open, fair, non-reductive kind of way. For the actors, we have to try and make these stories as truthful and compelling as possible.
There really isn't a story that you can't tell inside of it. It's very much a clearinghouse for anything that goes on in the world. So you're not at all limited.
Civilians are arrested every single day - including innocent ones - and they must wait until their day in court in order to argue their side of the story. Police officers must be subjected to the same rules.
We talk about institutions that are too big to fail - I think the story is as much about people who think they are too big to fail.
No one in 'Banshee' has small opinions. They have strong beliefs, and they will defend them ferociously. Having that element in the show just adds another level. It's another avenue for story, and it enriches the world.
I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape. Something waits beneath it; the whole story doesn't show.
Writers see the world differently. Every voice we hear, every face we see, every hand we touch could become story fabric.
A few years after my first son was born, he wanted to know how we chose his name, so I began reading him the story of Noah's Ark.
I now see how owning our story and loving ourselves through that process is the bravest thing that we will ever do.
I tell stories. Because I believe you can do things that joke tellers can't do, and that is, bring your audience along.
In politics, it's very theatrical. There's a lot of stage craft. The campaign is trying to tell a story that they want people to believe in, and candidates are playing the role, like actors, by a creative personae that people will be attracted to.
Rush Limbaugh, we expect nonsense from him. But the Vatican, that's another story. When the Vatican is so threatened that it launches attacks on nuns, well, you know what they say in politics, a hit dog hollers.
This is how deeply rooted stories are, folks. We crave them before we can walk, and we start telling them before we can talk.
You need supporting actors to help to tell the story. For me, I'm lucky to be a part of the films. Being an actor, I'll take any role, whether it's supporting or leading.
