You need someone who has a really good way of enabling trust in the cast and crew, or the cast particularly, to allow them the confidence to stretch themselves to get the performance that you're going to need to provide all of the emotional up and downs in the film.
I'd like to be remembered not only for my body of work but also for specific novels. Ideally, I want to be remembered in the same way as Stephen King, who defined and exemplified excellence in the horror genre in the late 20th and early 21st century.
I tend to avoid melodrama. I try to create very realistic settings and very realistic experiences and realistic responses to these experiences. Melodrama is the use of really big events that may or may not happen in real life - certainly they do, but they're not events that are common to most people. Most of the things that happen in my novels are things that could happen to people in real life.
I try to write every day until the book is done, but the exact process depends on the story and its structure. Sometimes, if the story is more linear, I write it from beginning to end.
I've made the decision to adhere to three general truths when it comes to my novels: There will be a love-story element to the story, the novel will be set in eastern North Carolina, and the characters will be likeable. Then, I make each novel unique through differences in voice, perspective, age and personalities of the characters, and of course, plot.
I have always had an interest in how cultural rituals play into something as unpredictable as romance.
I wanted to write a story that was different than what I've done before - so I decided to write dual love stories that will keep the reader wondering how the stories will come together by the end.
It doesn't matter to me whether I write in a man's voice or a woman's, or first or third person for that matter. Those choices come down to the story and I just go with it.
I write the things that I find most attractive in women. I like intelligence, I like passion - give me a little fire, be strong, don't be wishy-washy, do the right thing.
I don't want to be on the phone talking numbers and budget. I want to be creating a world.
Whenever you're trying to do a film in a genuine historical period, you do have to make sure that you get as much historically accurate as you possibly can because there are thousands of people who are wildly interested in the Civil War. If we get anything wrong, there is no doubt that we're going to hear from them.
The movies are fun, but I'm a novelist. In many ways, screenwriting is much easier than writing novels. I find screenplays twenty times easier to write than a novel.
I personally think that most people, most of the time, do the right thing. I just believe this. Otherwise, the world would be chaos, and it's not.
I'm not naive, I know that bad things happen, but most people do the right thing most of the time. Most people wake up and they try to do what's right for their relationships, whether it's marriage or family. They try to do what's right for their job. They try to make a better world for those around them, and that's what I want to write about.
As a writer, I will tell you that darkness is so easy to make interesting. It is so easy because you're allowed to do anything you want.
Setting is a major aspect in writing all of my books, both in terms of natural and cultural environments.
A book is maybe about 350 pages, and the prose allows for readers to get a glimpse into the internal lives of the characters. A screenplay is 120 pages, and it's all dialogue and action. The pacing of films is different, the structure is often different, and the internal lives of the characters must come across through the acting. Movies are just a different experience than reading - so it just depends on what an individual prefers.
Novels are very different than films and I love to see someone else's imagining of my story.
While I find inspiration in real life, the actual stories are, thankfully, works of fiction - which, given the considerable turmoil in my character's lives, is probably a good thing!
In this world that we live in we have originality in literature, but we also have TV and movies. I write love stories. I could never write a love story based on the Titanic - that was never a novel. If I see an idea that's been done in film, I try to avoid that.
