Quentin Tarantino on The Writing Process

“The thing that gets me started, that sends me on the road, is usually something very very basic. It’s almost as simple as possible. I do like working in genres. I like genres. I can make a case that every movie is a genre … But I like the fact that I usually start out with nothing more than – in this case – a bunch of guys in a mission for a World War II film. That’s what gets me to sit down and write it: Wouldn’t that be cool? Then, I start writing and the characters become the characters, and the scenario becomes the scenario, and it goes on its own way. I’m hoping to explode those genres and go way beyond them. While hopefully still delivering the pleasures that they have to offer. But I actually think the simpler the better as far as just the idea. I like Westerns, so just wanting to do a Western is enough … at the very beginning. And then it grows and grows and becomes what it becomes. But also, I try not to deal with the subtext of the movie as I’m writing it. I keep it about the text. I keep it about the scenario, and the moment-to-moment aspects of it. I know that there is a ton of subtext there. But I don’t want to know that. That’s taking care of itself, and I want it to just do its own thing … I don’t get analytical during the writing or during the making of it. [After] is the fun time when I actually get to be analytical about it, and see what I’ve done.”