As an artist, you want to make good stories and create good art; as a businessman, you want to make money and make sure the investors are happy. The two will always clash, unfortunately.
Human nature stays the same, the one thing that stays constant, like death and taxes. And people still want good stories!
Good stories flow like honey. Bad stories stick in the craw. A bad story? One that cannot be absorbed on the first time of reading.
It is important to tell good stories. You can tell stories even if they are not huge, epic, and wonderful. You can still take the responsibility for being a scribe of your tribe.
I always look for good stories and good characters, and if they're placed in a whodunit, then I'm interested.
There are only really a few stories to tell in the end, and betrayal and the failure of love is one of those good stories to tell.
I believe in love. I believe in good stories. I play really hard on the weekends because I like to have those stories. My wife and I go off and do craziness all the time. We're just like, 'What can we go get into this weekend?' Then we have other ones where we just sit and do nothing and then we have work that we do. It's all memories.
Good stories are driven by conflict, tension, and high stakes.
History is full of really good stories. That's the main reason I got into this racket: I want to make the argument that history is interesting.
When I read good stories, I want to write good stories too.