The pattern of a newspaperman's life is like the plot of 'Black Beauty.' Sometimes he finds a kind master who gives him a dry stall and an occasional bran mash in the form of a Christmas bonus, sometimes he falls into the hands of a mean owner who drives him in spite of spavins and expects him to live on potato peelings.
You learn different things through fiction. Historians are always making a plot about how certain things came to happen. Whereas a novelist looks at tiny little things and builds up a sort of map, like a painting, so that you see the shapes of things.
Some movies I see today have the most dramatic plot points but the actors are not playing them dramatically.
I consider plot a necessary intrusion on what I really want to do, which is write snappy dialogue.
When we try to push the envelope, there are certain sectors of society that say this is a Zionist plot to sort of destabilize our country, or this is an American agenda.
I think with musicals, it's much more part of the script. They don't want songs that would stop the show; they need songs that keep the plot moving.
I don't want to be Batman. Let Val Kilmer do it. I just want to be Uncle Batman. I have this whole 'warm relationship' plot in my mind. In the final scenes, the new Batmobile breaks down, the new Batman's stranded on the side of the road. We grab our old Batmobile, pick him up and drive away.
I love the idea of trying to do the work of old-fashioned novelists of plotting and of really making you curious about what's going to happen next and all that, but also trying to load it up with your weird thoughts and opinions.
Language is the ticket to plot and character, after all, because both are built out of language.
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.
