The dirty secret of art is you don’t have to show people your bad writing. That’s what we have the delete key for.
Ninety percent of what we create is not our best work.
We often put off doing something for as long as possible, then as we finally make the decision and step into the action, we’re surprised by its relative ease. We’re left to wonder why we dreaded it until we realize that most of life’s actions are within our reach, but decisions take willpower.
There is no screenplay-writing recipe that guarantees your cake will rise.
When you do enough research, the story almost writes itself. Lines of development spring loose and you’ll have choices galore.
Don’t be didactic – don’t write about poverty. Write about poor people. When you dramatize their lives and let life and characters be your inspiration, you will express the ‘idea’ dynamically and without preaching.
Story is about eternal, universal forms, not formulas.
Of all the reasons for wanting to write, the only one that nurtures us through time is love of the work itself.
Politics is the name we give to the orchestration of power in any society.
Given the choice between trivial material brilliantly told versus profound material badly told, an audience will always choose the trivial told brilliantly.
Angry contradiction of the patriarch is not creativity; it’s delinquency calling for attention. Difference for the sake of difference is as empty an achievement as slavishly following the commercial imperative.
We rarely know where we are going; writing is a discovery.
Secure writers don’t sell first drafts. They patiently rewrite until the script is as director-ready, as actor-ready as possible. Unfinished work invites tampering, while polished, mature work seals its integrity.
No matter our talent, we all know in the midnight of our souls that 90 percent of what we do is less than our best.
Most of life’s actions are within our reach, but decisions take willpower.
In life two negatives don’t make a positive. Double negatives turn positive only in math and formal logic. In life things just get worse and worse and worse.
No civilization, including Plato’s, has ever been destroyed because its citizens learned too much.
A culture cannot evolve without honest, powerful storytelling. When a society repeatedly experiences glossy, hollowed-out, pseudo-stories, it degenerates. We need true satires and tragedies, dramas and comedies that shine a clean light into the dingy corners of the human psyche and society.
Anxious, inexperienced writers obey rules. Rebellious, unschooled writers break rules. Artists master the form.
Writing is a marathon, not a sprint.