Joseph Bruchac Quotes

By the end, you should be inside your character, actually operating from within somebody else, and knowing him pretty well, as that person knows himself or herself. You're sort of a predator, an invader of people.

I really become the characters when I'm writing them. I'll become one or two of them more than others, I'm consistent that way.

There's a kind of acting that goes on in my head when I'm writing a character where I put myself in their place.

The best books come from someplace deep inside.... Become emotionally involved. If you don't care about your characters, your readers won't either.

If I write a character, instead of looking from the outside, like maybe a journalist would, trying to describe them physically and figuring out what kind of things they might be interested in or have in their house, I don't really do it that way. I try to feel what it would be like to be inside this person, to be them.

The first thing I do when I read a part is see if I can identify emotionally with a character. If I make that connection, everything else is just working on knowing their life circumstances and manifesting those through practice and research.

With every character that I've ever played, I felt like I just understood the way that she thought and how she was.

I think it's difficult to be honest about certain aspects of my work without acknowledging that I have experienced or felt or questioned certain of the themes in the books.

To understand history,' Chacko said, 'we have to go inside and listen to what they're saying. And look at the books and the pictures on the wall. And smell the smells.

I think one of the hardest things about doing a book in the first person is that to a certain extent each day, when you begin to do your work, you're climbing into somebody else's skin.

While writing, writers are living inside a character or characters, and when the book ekes into the world, writers are living inside the reader. That's more than connecting.

Sometimes when a character in a novel is difficult for me to enter, I sue something in myself or in my own life as a doorway into that character's mind and emotions.

You take something from your past that you're somewhat ashamed about and you write about it from another character's point of view.

How can we judge fairly of the characters and merits of men, of the wisdom or folly of actions, unless we have . . . an accurate knowledge of all particulars, so that we may live as it were in the times, and among the persons, of whom we read, see with their eyes, and reason and decide on their premises?

Sometimes you walk away from playing somebody and you think, "Wow that was far as from my own experience as I can possibly be." And sometimes you walk away thinking, "Wow. There are qualities in that character that I didn't realize I had." And those can be both interesting and uncomfortable.

I find that if I hold your hand, it transfers an energy first. I have a sense of how you feel. That's important to me trying to become another person. I have a lot pressure to bring a character to life in any kind of real sense.

To hold the reader's attention, you have to bring the person who's reading the book inside the experience of the time: What was it like to have been alive then? What were these people like as human beings?

I just like to inhabit a character really deeply.

Even when you think you can detach yourself from the characters, you don't. Because you're spending so much time trying to realize this person and make them real that they do infect you, in a way. And you do take them home and live with them, even if you think you're turning the character off. But in order to pull off a role convincingly, you wind up thinking about that person all the time, and it does sort of creep into you. And then there are things that you'll respond to, or react to in a very different way than you would normally.

What I try to do in writing any character is to put myself in his position.

I try to create sympathy for my characters, then turn the monsters loose.

I think there's a bit of me in every character. Basically it just depends on what happens with the character.

When you write a character and their dialogue, you can't help imagining how you would be acting if you were them. You kind of have to relate to all of them. It's the most personal thing I've ever done.

A lot of readers ask me, "Do you ever get emotional while writing the book?" or "Did you cry when you killed this character?" And the truth is, no, I didn't. That's not really the way I approach it. I don't get emotional while writing, but then there are plenty of other authors who do.

I think in a lot of ways, writing, when you're really in there, is like being an actress because you're in somebody else's head.