J. Courtney Sullivan Quotes

I like my characters to be ones I think about long after I've finished reading the script.

I am a firm believer that a good plot makes for a fun enough read, but it's not what binds us. If we don't care about the characters, we won't care - not in a lasting way - about what's happening to them.

The characters don't all have to be likable, and they don't all have to be hateable. As long as it's interesting and you connect to them and they resonate with you and you want to find out what happens and it feels authentic, then we have something.

I just want to keep finding special characters that I feel like I can bring to life and characters that are real and not superficial.

If you can't laugh at your own characters, or shed a tear for them, or even get angry at one of them, no one else will either.

I think you have to love the characters that you write. I don't know how you could possibly write a TV show where you didn't love the characters.

A lot of times in movies, especially in sequels, the characters become caricatures and just sort of improv machines and joke machines, rather than people you can actually connect to.

It's really important to stay engaged and involved in the character.

The most emotionally connected I've ever been to a character is Natsuki in 'Summer Wars.'

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

I'm focused on finding characters I connect to.

I love all my characters. I love their weaknesses and flaws. I feel like they're all my best friends and I adore being with them.

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

The first thing, when I read the script, is that I need to care about what happens and feel compelled by the story and engaged by the characters. It needs to resonate with me, even if what the characters are going through is not something that I have experienced in my life. I have to feel like it has some sort of meaning to me.

You treat characters like people you meet in life-friends or mentors.

I'm always sorry to finish a book, to let go of characters I love, people I've struggled to understand for years, people who evolve before me.

I love making characters real and believable, through my own experience and choices.

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

I can always tell when a filmmaker doesn't care about his or her characters; they just care about setting them up to kill them off.

I think often times on Joss Whedon's shows he can make you hate a character for a period and then love the character. He does it effortlessly.

The audience has to understand that if the film is going to have any meaning for them. If they are going to empathize with the characters, they have to visualize the process of concentration involved in making every move.

I think the ultimate thing in some ways for any writer is to work on a character who's going to have a life for a long time.

If the characters are compelling, readers will follow anywhere.

These people are real to me, and situations keep coming up where their emergence feels natural. It's like meeting old friends. I hope readers feel the same way.

Your structure and format may not be perfect, and you may not have picked the perfect franchise, but if I pick up a script, and the characters are real, whole, complicated and come from a place of somebody who really is feeling it, that's what people remember.