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I feel like if a film is well-written, then the character's arc is complete. There really is very little room to expand on that afterwards.

When you're telling a story, the best stories, every character has an arc. Every one. And that arc is usually about finding yourself, or about at least finding something about yourself that you didn't know.

It's a whole other way of working when you work in films: You know exactly the arc of your character.

With a series, you build the character as you go. When you've got a shorter project or a film, you know the overall arc from the beginning.

When you're making a television show, it's about the story and arc of the show rather than any particular episode or director.

With a play, there's more of a definable arc because of the nature of theater: You know, there's no editing, so there's something more natural about the arc a character follows in a play. I think theater is more an actor's medium, whereas film is more a director's medium, because that's who controls the final feel of the film.

For me, one thing I love is having an arc for a character.

As much as I devoured comics, I read non-graphic books exponentially more, so I'm not sure I can credit or blame them. Comics, however, taught me a lot about what makes a story arc work and how to bring a story to its natural resting place between issues.

I always start with characters rather than with a plot, which many critics would say is very obvious from the lack of plot in my films - although I think they do have plots - but the plot is not of primary importance to me, the characters are.

Beginning in the 1920s and 1930s, film has been a shadow thrown over the minds of all novelists. Ever since, novelists have strained to make themselves more relevant and, whether consciously or not, novel-writing has been influenced by cinematic doctrines - by turns, embracing and defying it.