A Quote by Simon Toyne

I hate it when characters know things but only reveal them when it's convenient to the story. I'd never do that. That's cheating.

Simon Toyne

Quote Topics

Characters Cheating Convenient Hate I Hate Know Never Only Reveal Story Them Things

Quote Author

Simon Toyne
British - Writer
Born: February 29, 1968

No matter what happens, it will, then, always remain secret: only I know exactly the weight and force of the covenants I have made -- I and the Lord with whom I have made them -- unless I choose to reveal them. If I do not, then they are secret and sacred no matter what others may say or do. Anyone who would reveal these things has not understood them, and therefore that person has not given them away. You cannot reveal what you do not know!

Hugh Nibley

Truly great performers reveal not only their characters but bring everything they know about the world with them. It's not just what's in the script but the story of everything you've done and of who you are. If you're Chaplin, you're the immigrant. No matter what he's doing, he's always the little guy trying to make his place in the world.

Norman Lloyd

A lot of people think that they are really cool because they don't outline. In my writing group, they would say, "I will never outline. I let the characters take me." C'mon, man - I outline the story, but it's only like one page. It's a list of possible reversals in the story, like things where everything will just change because of this certain reveal or this certain action. Then I start really digging into the character because, to me, I don't care what the story is.

Matt de la Pena

In genre movies, you usually not only hate the characters, you sometimes hate them so much that you hate the actors playing them.

Bobcat Goldthwait

I think people are a mixture of everything. I like desperate characters because they do things that most of us normally wouldn't do. If a character is a scoundrel or a liar you think you know them, but then I can bring some emotion to them and they become much fuller than you ever imagined. So what I try to do is have a story where you don't quite know where it's going, and characters who you don't quite know where they're going.

Richard Shepard

Characters are so important to a story that they actually decide where the story is going. When I write, I know my characters. I know how things are going to end, and I know some important incidents along the way.

E. L. Konigsburg

I never used to kill characters, because I thought killing characters was cheating.

David Hare

I know the relationships, and I already know my characters and how I'm going to reveal my characters to my readers - how I'm going to feed them information about that character. That stuff doesn't have to be in my outline.

Janet Evanovich

I don't use recurring characters. I do get very interested my characters while I'm working with them, and I find the process of fitting them into a story, and allowing them to create the story around themselves, fascinating. But no, I don't imagine they have a life outside of what I make for them.

Jessica Abel

To be successful is never convenient. The things you have to go through, it's never convenient.

Eric Thomas

I think the most appealing characters for the audience are the ones that you never know whether to root for them or whether to hate them. That's what keeps people drawn to their television sets.

Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje

Every movie has three things you have to do - you have to have a compelling story that keeps people on the edge of their seats; you have to populate that story with memorable and appealing characters; and you have to put that story and those characters in a believable world. Those three things are so vitally important.

John Lasseter

We all know well that we can do things for others and in the process crush them, making them feel that they are incapable of doing things by themselves. To love someone is to reveal to them their capacities for life, the light that is shining in them.

Jean Vanier

It's funny what [producer Richard Zanuck said about even though you can't quite place when the book or the story came into your life, and I do vaguely remember roughly five years old reading versions of Alice in Wonderland, but the thing is the characters. You always know the characters. Everyone knows the characters and they're very well-defined characters, which I always thought was fascinating. Most people who haven't read the book definitely know the characters and reference them.

Johnny Depp

I detest the word plot. I never, never think of plot. I think only and solely of character. Give me the characters; I'll tell you a story-maybe a thousand stories. The interaction between and among human beings is the only story worth telling.