Screenwriting 101: Steve Zaillian

“I don’t try to build empathy. I don’t need to, since a character’s behavior will do that for me, if there’s any to be had. Neither do I judge, or go out of my way to vilify. The word sympathetic is not one I think about. I don’t try to make a character sympathetic, or unsympathetic, in anything I write. I just try to understand them. I see them as real people in a real world, and where they end up on the ‘sympathy scale’ will be determined by their behavior.”

— Steve Zaillian

From Written By, February / March 2020