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I'm really quite bad at coming up with plot ideas. I like to create characters and just see what will happen to them when I let them loose!

I'm always writing about character first. Plot, such as it is, comes from the characters.

First comes an idea. Then, characters begin to evolve out of the landscape of that idea. And then, finally, characters dominate: plot is simply a function of what these people might do or be. Everything has to flow from their personalities; otherwise it will not be emotionally engaging, or plausible.

Plot and character are virtually the same thing.

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.

I am a firm believer that a good plot makes for a fun enough read, but it's not what binds us. If we don't care about the characters, we won't care - not in a lasting way - about what's happening to them.

Characters are incredibly important, but I tend to build them around the plot during the outline stage. However, once I'm writing the manuscript, the characters I'm writing dictate how the plot unfolds.

I love good stories; you have to have a good plot - characters which intertwine with a good plot.

For me, plot always comes out of character, so I had to be sure of my characters.

If you let the plot be determined by what you feel is in the character's mind at that point, it may not turn out to be a very good play, but at least it will be a play where people are behaving in a kind of truthful way.