If I knew a story page by page before I started writing it, I just wouldn't do it. The process of discovery is really important for my own enjoyment.
Novels are nothing but evolution, but there does come a point when that stops, and the story is sealed within the pages of the book. That doesn't happen with a play. Even performances are different every night.
It turns out that every person alive today can trace his or her ancestry back to Africa. Everyone's DNA tells a story of a journey from an African homeland to wherever you live.
I think people enjoy a series. When you like a story, many readers want more of the same, which is dandy, if the author and the characters have more to say.
There were about ten years of trying, failing, trying again, suffering rejection, etc. My first published book, 'Story of a Girl', was the fourth book I wrote.
I'm so focused on trying to craft the story that I'm in my own little world with it and that process. The one reader I'm trying to please as I write is me, and I'm pretty difficult to please.
The main thing that I learned from editing is that most people, when they're making a film, they start too early into the story. They will try to set up the characters, they will try to establish things before the plot actually starts.
In bad weather, I spent hours drawing action figures on paper, coloring them, backing them on cardboard, then cutting them out and creating whole stories around their lives.
An actor puts himself in the hands of a director. And the director's first responsibility, obviously, is to tell the story, but the smallest thing that's not true reads on the screen. So if a director sees that an actor is not believable, he needs to...
Tom Kizzia hasn't just observed and written about Alaska for three-plus decades, he's lived it. 'Pilgrim's Wilderness' is a story that needed to be told by the only man who could tell it.
But then, that’s the beauty of writing stories—each one is an exploratory journey in search of a reason and a shape. And when you find that reason and that shape, there’s no feeling like it." [ , 3:AM Magazine, June 2003]
In 'Open City,' there is a passage that any reader of Joyce will immediately recognise as a very close, formal analogue of one the stories in 'Dubliners.' That is because a novel is also a literary conversation.
A mental shutdown can happen when a young person is put in front of a Shakespeare play. My pieces are designed to release young audiences into the story and then creep up with the real Shakespeare, almost by stealth.
I never write my stories as a wake-up call as such. I simply explore the kinds of situations that I find personally challenging by placing characters into situations that challenge them in similar ways.
You can't tell the story of a 13-year-old boy who knows every lyric to 'Phantom of the Opera' without also referencing how much teasing he gets at school.
I don't want to be an editor! I don't want to direct; I'd be a horrible director. I don't want to write - I have a 'story by' credit on one film I did. And I don't want to edit at all.
I don't think a living being should suffer for the sake of fashion, period. End of story. You don't have to kill an animal just because you want to be hot and fly. And I really stand by that.
I actually thought 'Desperate Housewives' finished very well. I just think there's still stories to be told. I feel like I get that from fans that they weren't done watching those people's lives.
Ancient societies had anthropomorphic gods: a huge pantheon expanding into centuries of dynastic drama; fathers and sons, martyred heroes, star-crossed lovers, the deaths of kings - stories that taught us of the danger of hubris and the primacy of hu...
I like straightforward names for my characters. When I get too symbolic with names or places, I start feeling like the characters and the story are less read, and I lose interest.
One of the things I've found most challenging about writing a multibook series is keeping it fresh and evolving while still delivering the familiarity that keeps longtime fans devoted to the characters and story world.
