A Quote by Greta Gerwig
One of the things that happens when you write characters - and maybe this is my own sentimentality - is that I always find I have an instinct to protect them.
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Sure, I'll have characters drop in and out of books but the main cast of characters always changes. Maybe I'm wrong but I think if had the same joe detective guy or gal, I wouldn't write them as well; I wouldn't do as good a job.
I'm always following the characters and I'm always interested in what happens to them, but what happens to them is conditioned by the circumstances in which they live.
It's probably unprecedented for a filmmaker simply to take the writers' script and treat it as the instructions on the package. What really happens is you pretty much suppress your own instincts - and your own views on the matter - and write things the way filmmakers would like to have them, though the filmmakers often don't know what they want. They can only find out by reading what you do.
And I don't know where to find Ashley Danfield and all the other lovely commentators who show me live courtroom trials. To me, you know, I'm obsessed with it. Like I think maybe if I wasn't an actor I'd be a litigator. But, you know, it's always just shocking to see what happens in real life because most of the things that you see on those trials if you tried to write them into a TV series you would say oh gosh, no one would believe that would ever happen. But yet they always do in real life.
Y'see, I get so bored so easily. I like to start with a clean slate each time. Sure, I'll have characters drop in and out of books but the main cast of characters always changes. Maybe I'm wrong but I think if had the same joe detective guy or gal, I wouldn't write them as well; I wouldn't do as good a job.
There is a strange impulse in many to protect Bible characters and to use them as inspiration... as if sanctification happens as a result of emulation.
As a mom, I always feel I have to protect them. I talk about them because they are the most important things in my life but they are private people. I won't use them for my own press.
In order to avoid sentimentality and to be able to write the screenplay with the kind of humor and irony necessary to keep the story moving, I needed to distance myself as much as I could from the characters, to try to get to a point where I could view them objectively.
I find interesting characters or lessons that resonate with people and sometimes I write about them in the sports pages, sometimes I write them in a column, sometimes in a novel, sometimes a play or sometimes in nonfiction. But at the core I always say to myself, 'Is there a story here? Is this something people want to read?'
I had an instinct before and maybe now I don't have that instinct as much as knowing what to do, what shots to hit, where to place the ball, things like that.
Sometimes the characters develop almost without your knowing it. You find them doing things you hadn't planned on, and then I have to go back to page 42 and fix things. I'm not recommending it as a way to write. It's very sloppy, but it works for me.
Yes, I suffer terribly from depression. I have to work at being happy, it's not my natural instinct. My natural instinct is, if something wonderful happens, to throw water in my own face.
The best option that you can have as an actor is pure instinct and you should be able to protect your instinct. Information can either cloud your instinct or aid it.
Writers are there to write, not experience things. If you want to experience things, become a pirate or a Bookhunter. If you want to write, write. If you can't find the makings of a story inside yourself, you won't find them anywhere.
You're responsible for your own character to a degree, because when it comes to the final draft of the script, you might say, "Well, I think maybe I could add this here, add that there." But I find that I write just as well for the other characters as I do for myself. I think.
Not long ago I made a list of Doc Ford books I would like to do, and I came up with 11 pretty easily. I like to let the characters go their own ways and see what happens. I find them fascinating.
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