Novels demand a certain complexity of narrative and scope, so it's necessary for the characters to change.
From Maria Semple
I try to begin with a strong grasp of my characters. Even if it's schematic, I need it clear in my head who these people are.
One reason I find all this character growth and narrative swerving so exhilarating is because I never got to do it when I wrote for TV. Our characters needed to remain consistent from week to week.
Much of the time in the writer's room is spent working on story, and I was always challenging myself to make it more interesting, tighter and more surprising: to come at it sideways in a way that the audience wasn't expecting.
It was important for me early on to find the voice of each character and figure out what was unique about them and their individual worldview that I could use for comedy or conflict.
Writing a novel is so hard, and there are so many problems that the last thing you're thinking about is adapting this mess you have on your hands as a movie. You just want to get it to work as a novel. That's your main focus.
There's something uniquely exhilarating about puzzling together the truth at the hands of an unreliable narrator.
My summer reading suggestion: Pick a really famous, really long novel.
I think that everyone in Seattle, their daily existence, is enriched by all the charitable giving that is courtesy of Microsoft.
I quickly realized that shopping on Amazon had made the idea of parking my car and going into a store feel like an outrageous imposition on my time and good nature.
4 perspectives
3 perspectives
2 perspectives
1 perspectives