Nina Tassler Quotes

You have to present characters an audience can relate to.

Sympathetic characters usually have a voice. They usually don't have any trouble being heard.

You can't make the audience fall in love with a character you don't like.

I'm interested in characters and relationships.

One of the things that separates a good genre movie from a bad genre movie, I always think, ironically, is when you care about the people. The dime a dozen ones are where you don't have any awareness of the character.

The characters are always the focal point of a book for me, whether I'm writing or reading. I may enjoy a book that has an intriguing mystery or a good plot, but to become one of my real favorites, it has to have great characters.

I seem to have to make my characters family before I can access their hearts in any way that matters.

Readers embrace all kinds of characters as long as they are written with emotional truth.

I can tell you that as a writer and as a reader, I regard character as king. Or queen. No matter how riveting the action or interesting the plot twists, if I don't feel like I'm meeting someone who feels real, I'm not going to be compelled to read further.

When you're building a character, or at least when I'm building a character, you start saying, 'How am I going to make people like him?'

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

You need the audience to become invested in the characters and in order to become invested, they need to identify with the characters... and that's why the characters need to be real.

I am looking for a character that connects to me on some level. It has to be about something, it has to have depth to it and it has to be about something. The story of the character and their relationship with the people and places around them appeal to me and are what I look for.

If you have great characters, then your reader becomes emotionally invested in those people.

My characters are always utterly sympathetic to me, if that makes any sense.

What makes an audience watch something and care about the characters is the emotional life of the characters.

You have to be involved and relate to the characters in order to make a film that is true emotionally.

If we get caught up in a story, it's because we've started to care about the characters, and that can only happen if we've moved beneath the surface.

I always try to make my characters people, and yet I always want to entertain.

When writing a novel a writer should create living people; people not characters. A character is a caricature.

As a writer, you have to realize that people want to like the characters, so you have to be careful to keep them involved.

One must never assume that a character is sympathetic because of either the actor playing them or the fact that they're a lead. I think that's a recipe for failure, actually, because if they become unsympathetic, you lose your audience.

I usually don't find myself reacting to my characters. I just create them ... And let the audience decide whether they're empathetic or scared or compelled to cheer me on.

I think I would struggle with any job if it was purely about effects. Even as a viewer, those aren't the kind of things that interest me. I think ultimately you have to be connected to characters and their relationships. Otherwise, it's not drama to me.

When I approach any script, I always try to find what I would relate to most in it.