The beauty behind killing someone who no one thinks you're willing to kill is, of course, that you throw people out of their comfort zone. And that's good because you want people to be on the edge of their seats.

What you have to get used to as a writer is realizing that most of what you come up with is wrong for the show.

What happens is that as the scripts are rewritten and re-edited in order to make the story more compelling, you sometimes end up with what you could call a time singularity - where there's no way for everything that happens to happen in real time. It's something that you need to wink at.

The rule, I think, is: Do your homework, learn what there is to learn about the real world, and then when you get in the room, forget it all.

I personally have more faith than the average writer in people's willingness to be complicated, and so I'm thrilled by what's happened. I'm elated at audiences' willingness to handle complexity. In some sense, I feel like my belief in what people are capable of is being validated.

The beauty behind killing someone who no one thinks you're willing to kill is, of course, that you throw people out of their comfort zone. And that's good because you want people to be on the edge of their seats.

I actually started in the opposite place. I come from a technical background - I'm a mathematician and a programmer by trade - and I was one of those people who would watch a show and say, "Oh, that could never happen."