Cory Barlog Quotes

Characters are so important to a story that they actually decide where the story is going. When I write, I know my characters. I know how things are going to end, and I know some important incidents along the way.

For every book that I write... I develop a history for each person and make sure they are well rounded and flawed. You have to know everything about them from their shoe size, to where they went to school, to what their first pet was, to what they like to eat, to what they want out of life.

I think it is important that you care about the characters, and you are not just waiting for the next action sequence but have a vested interested in what happens to them.

The work that I do with all of my characters is have some sense of where they come from. I kind of create my own story for myself. What's going on with my parents? Are they alive? Or family - do I have children? Do you see those things or not?

When it comes to a character, I make sure that it adds to the plot.

Plot is just not my gift. I'm fascinated with complex characters, and that doesn't mix well with complex plots. And by the way, when the plot is simple, you can move one piece around and make it feel fresh. Hell or High Water's a good example: I don't tell you why the brothers are robbing the bank.

Characterisation is more important to me than the script. A decent story and extraordinary characters can do wonders for a film, but you cannot do it the other way around.

Plot and character are virtually the same thing.

All fiction is about people, unless it's about rabbits pretending to be people. It's all essentially characters in action, which means characters moving through time and changes taking place, and that's what we call 'the plot'.

Everybody has parents. As a dramatist, whenever you write a character, you must write their parents as well, even if the parents aren't there.

A friend of mine who is in the publishing business knew I was writing a book, and he said, 'Have you said anything yet about the good guy? Because I know you spend so much time with the bad guys.' Because they're fun. So then you have to make the good guy fun, in order to compete. That's the challenge.

You've got to leave the reader with more than just a name and a costume - they need to know who the character is, what they're like, what kind of attitude they have, what sort of role they play.

Don't start writing your novel until you know your characters very, very well. What they'd do if they saw somebody shoplifting. What they were like at school. What shoes they wear. Spend days - weeks, months - being them until they thicken up and start to breathe.

I tend to come up with people more than situations - most of my books start with a character.

Characters are incredibly important, but I tend to build them around the plot during the outline stage. However, once I'm writing the manuscript, the characters I'm writing dictate how the plot unfolds.

Any author of fiction will tell you that characters don't need to be told what to do.

You just play what a writer writes, in terms of what a character chooses to do and how a character chooses to deal with their various relationships.

I try to begin with a strong grasp of my characters. Even if it's schematic, I need it clear in my head who these people are.

I, as a fan of numerous TV shows and movies, know that people mess up. The characters that we love are not always going to act in the ways that we want them to. That's what makes them interesting.

I try to create characters that I am fascinated by on some level or intrigued by or can't stand.

I used to get stuck trying to find the first sentence of a story, then I realised that it was often because I didn't know what problem a character was facing in the story. As soon as I did, I could have the character trying to do something about it or have the problem whack him between the eyes.

My stories are character driven.

I have a cheat-sheet for each one of my characters about their personality, the way they look, etc. So there is no possible way that I could have writer's block.

I'm about my characters.

If you don't have people that the reader cares about and stories that are gripping, you've got nothing.