Matthew Wiener on 'Mad Men' writes the entire series before they start shooting, and if you have that, then what you can do with character and story is not at all unlike what you can do in a novel.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I'm not really a plot writer - I'm more interested in the characters and sort of small events that propel the story forward.
In a series, you really need to stay open-minded. It's not like a play or a film, where you can create and fully commit to your character's back-story.
The writer of stories or of novels settles on men and imitates them; he exhausts the possibilities of his characters.
An author's characters do what he wants them to do.
I have to know the killer, the victim and the motive when I begin. Then I start to create the characters and see how the novel takes shape based on what these people are like.
When I work on a novel, I usually have one character and a setting in mind.
My goal is to write books that are quality books with very real characters and a gripping plot.
Characters develop as the book progresses, but any that start to bore me end up in the wastepaper basket. In real life, we may have to put up with tedious people, but not in novels.
If there is a book that the script came from you have to read it, you have to see what you can get out of it: mood, back story and things that may not even be in the film. They kick off your imagination and broaden the character, I think.
I know what I want to achieve in each book and the major points, but I don't plan right down to the chapters. I think that the characters write themselves in some degree.
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