James Cameron

I like that.

And you try to drill down on the creative process.

I'm a writer.

I'm sitting there.

I'm looking at a blank screen.

Where do you start?

And a lot of writers do it in very different ways.

Some start page one.

Bob walks down the street.

Yeah.

And then it just goes from there in a linear fashion.

For me, it coalesces probably almost in a diffusion model kind of way.

I start writing notes and little images come to me and I start putting the notes together.

And for the Avatar sequels, for example...

I wrote over a thousand pages of notes, just little fragments.

And sometimes dreams play a part in that, and sometimes just the daydreaming process, that creative engine.

Because I think that same creative engine that runs at night, out of control, nonlinear, chaotic.

montage style is actually more functional during the day and can be kind of directed to stay on a topic and follow it through.

So maybe I'll be thinking about a character and then something will pop into my mind and then I'll start writing about that.

And I'm not trying to tell a linear narrative at that point.