I realized that I get pleasure when I'm told, 'Don't listen to the haters; they're losers in their moms' basements.' I imagine these 'losers' and feel better about myself. Their insults hurt less if I label them 'pathetic.' I diminish their value in order to protect mine. I noticed that I'm quick to make a joke at someone else's expense.
Julie Plec
You can love and hate your family with equal measure, but the power of the bond you have to have with them, you can't really ever walk away.
I used to sneak 'General Hospital' when I was a kid. My cousin was my babysitter, and she watched it, so I got hooked on it. I wasn't supposed to be watching it, but I was so obsessed with it that I'd find ways, even as an 8-year-old, to get into that.
I love real women that don't have to be saints, who can be selfish and act out against their parents or like the wrong guy, because that's life. That's my life, at least.
Daily, I visualize the smart-ass troll who lives deep in my subconscious, and I pelt him with rainbows and unicorns. I fight a battle against my judgmental thoughts. And when an opportunity arises to gain acceptance or popularity at the expense of someone else, I zip it. It's not easy.
I talk all the time about how much I read growing up and how much I love Stephen King and how he impacted my work from a genre perspective, but Pat Conroy wrote some of the most magnificent stories about characters who had to deal with dysfunctional families and try to find a place of honor in their own world and the pain of loss.
I call it 'The Breakfast Club' philosophy. There's something about being trapped in a dire situation with a group of people that you would never normally be trapped with.
When you're dealing with long-distance relationships, it's a relationship played out over technology. When you're in high school, it's because you're not supposed to act on those impulses yet. So some of my favorite relationships in drama are based in people that can't really be together.
Cynicism doesn't have its way in series finales. My emotional desire when I watch a series come to an end is to be crying and laughing and cheering as the final credits roll, feeling like I just got delivered the happy ending, whether the plot ends happily or not.
Humanity has both its beautiful and its ugly sides.
I wanted to work in Hollywood. I was captivated by it. I read 'Premiere Magazine' and 'Movieline Magazine' and 'Us' before it was a weekly magazine.
'The Vampire Diaries' is a serialized drama. It deserved its final chapter.
Fans are always talking about endgame as though endgame has been chosen from minute 1. I don't know that you could talk to a single series creator that would say confidently 'Where I started is where I finished, and there was no way in hell I was going to stray from that path.' 'Dawson's' being the perfect example.
I didn't get paid to write professionally until my first episode of 'Kyle XY,' which was the fourth episode of the first season.
There are a lot of things you do in a supernatural universe that can toe the line and cross the line.
I always talk about Meredith and Derrick from 'Grey's Anatomy,' and I loved them the most when they sort of opened and closed each episode with them in bed, happy with each other, and you didn't need to insert extra conflict into them, because there was plenty of conflict in the show. So they were this port in the storm of conflict.
I feel like Caroline Forbes is such a crucial element... on 'The Vampire Diaries.'
Happiness is not necessarily a drama magnet.
I'm a night owl; I could work until 6 in the morning without even thinking about it.
If the day-to-day culture is saying it's OK to not be inclusive or tolerant, that it's OK to be bigoted, then it's your responsibility to double down and make it OK in storytelling to be inclusive and tolerant.
You're supposed to be writing from experience - experience with people, with reading, seeing some homeless guy on the street and making up some story of him in your head. If you never see any of that or have those conversations or even sleep enough to have vivid dreams, then what are you writing about?
I would never say no to continuing to explore the - somebody coined the phrase for me the other day, which I love - 'TVDU,' 'The 'Vampire Diaries' Universe.' I have no desire to exploit it, but I also know that there are plenty of opportunities for stories left to be told.
Because I was such a student of pop culture growing up, I love that on the list of things that I got to work on in my first years out of college were 'Scream' and 'Dawson's Creek' and, ultimately now, 'The Vampire Diaries,' which generations below me grew up on and can quote. I love that. I think that is the coolest thing in the world.
When you're telling taut, tight storytelling that has any kind of built-in plot twist elements, you tend to want to stack everything up on top of itself as opposed to letting things breathe and be languid in terms of the passage of time.
I think that when you're exploring themes of humanity and what defines a hero and what makes us our best self and what makes us our worst self, you're going to stumble into territories of societal issues and that kind of thing. Sometimes you have accidents where you're not trying, but then the opportunity just presents itself. and you lean into it.
When you have to spread heroism across too many players, you don't get to really dig deep into each of them as much as you'd want to.
Growing up, I remember watching 'Little House on the Prairie' and 'L.A. Law' and being so obsessed with it.
I remember, my freshman year of college, sitting in my TV room at the end of my dorm hallway with one other girl watching the premiere of 'Beverly Hills, 90210.' And then, a year later, walking into a room packed with college students watching '90210,' and I thought, 'I wonder what it must be like to be part of a phenomenon like that.'
I remember just weeping my way through the 'Friday Night Lights' finale with my best friend and just being so happy all the way through because it was so beautiful.
I had a moment where I wrote a movie script, and it was my first movie job, and I was very excited to do it, and my only goal was really not to get fired off of it.
'Ghost World' was such an incredibly difficult episode to find the right tone for. I remember at the time it was very divisive because some people hated it - they thought it was cheesy and hokey - and I loved it. When I saw it, I cried my head off, and I was so happy.
Speaking only for myself, the ideal finale to me is 'Friday Night Lights,' where you have loved and worshipped a show for all these years, you get to come back, celebrate the characters, finish up their journeys, and send everyone out with a feeling of, 'My God, I'm so grateful that I got to know these people.'
We all have our own party fantasy that we've either lived or wanted to live in New Orleans.
Hollywood, Twitter, our friends - they all contribute to a community of snark. The more we engage in the way that everyone else engages, the more followers, likes, and RTs we get. But we can't rail against the cyberbullies without acknowledging what we also contribute to a culture of cruelty.
TV writing - for me, at least - is half original voice and half an embodiment and a representation of the spirit of the actors you're writing for.
The intensity of the story breaking on 'Vampire' has never been easy. Every week, you're starting with a blank board and trying to make a new movie. There's no formula; there's no franchise to hang your hat on.
Kevin Williamson and I wrote a show about loss and grief that just so happened to have vampires in it.
I look at 'Friday Night Lights' as one of my all-time favorite series finales, and that is what you want. After all the roads you've traveled with these people, you just want to know that they're going to be happy. I'm a big believer in shows that make that choice.
To me, TV relationships work at their best when there is a deep longing and feelings and interest and sexual attraction that is unrequitable.
As you live your life and accumulate friends, both IRL and on social media, ask yourself, are you a bully too?
It doesn't matter if these characters are supposed to be together forever: if their chemistry gets stale, you want somebody to die, you want to put somebody in a coma, you want to write them off the show - anything to save you.
God bless Hollywood and all that it stands for, but, you know, people tend to peak in their 40s, and then it's all downhill from there.
I've always loved the genre of virus movies or Armageddon movies - anything that involves being trapped with the cute boy in detention when the zombies are attacking.
I wanted people to talk about the finale of 'The Vampire Diaries' as one of their favorites, which is a lofty ambition, but it certainly drove me hard creatively to make sure that we had put as much thought and love into it as we possibly could.
If I walk into the editing room, it's six hours lost. I'm massaging frames. I'm, like, 'Oh, take six frames off that shot. Hit the music cue right there.' I will drive everybody crazy if left to my own devices in that room. So I try to do everything I can by staying out of the way.
The whole reason I like these virus movies is because I read 'The Stand' when I was in junior high and thought it was the greatest book I'd ever read.
There is no definitive end to anybody's story when you're dealing with the fluidity of chemistry, because when it gets stale, you want out.
TV is really, really, really hard work. You sacrifice a lot of your personal life, a lot of your sanity, just to do one show.
An actor's only perception is of their character, and they're looking at one piece. A writer is looking at the entire story. They're going to see things that the writer didn't see because they're only looking through their lens.
The way that 'Vampire' was born was over a lunch. We got asked to do the show. A week later, we were hired. A week later, we were writing it. The minute we handed it in, it was ordered. The minute we shot it, it was picked up. Then we started working. There was never any, like, 'OK, here's what this show is...' We had to figure it out as we went.
