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.
I was studying to be an architect, I wasn't plotting to join the movies. Films were just another career option. I took acting up with the same schoolgirl enthusiasm I had for examinations. Acting is a job and I take it very seriously.
In plotting a book, my goal is to raise the stakes for the characters and, in so doing, keep the reader mesmerized.
I like books that have razor-sharp plotting that snaps and moves along. It's not about the main character being different at the end. I don't want my main character to be different in the end. I still want him committed to his ideas, to be steadfast, true and loyal.
You can't compete with hip-hop. That doesn't mean I don't want to be as big as a rap star. I do - I'm always competitive. But there's this weird perception of me as someone who's sitting around plotting like a devil. It's not like that.
I never believed I could write anything. No way - write a whole story? Figuring out all that plotting and symbolism? How do you foreshadow things?
When I started 'Still Missing,' I had a few key plot points in mind, which I played around with mentally for a couple of months, then one day I just started writing. Not having an outline led to some cool plot twists, but also many rewrites! A lot of the plotting happened on subsequent drafts.
Whether core al Qaeda or its offshoots like AQAP, ISIS, or the many others - we are working with our partners to find and disrupt them, wherever they are, whether they're plotting attacks on Americans here at home or abroad.
Criminal and terrorist threats are morphing beyond traditional actors and tactics. We still have to worry about things like an al-Qaida cell plotting a large-scale attack, but we also now have to worry increasingly about homegrown violent extremists radicalizing in the shadows.
I became chairman of the inmates committee. Got into a lot of trouble. Was accused of fomenting a riot. Was accused of plotting to kill the warden.
