Mani Ratnam Quotes

I love... What's gratifying to me is when you make/create a character and a human being, a person who lives entirely and who has their own existence, just merely from the words on a page.

When I create characters, I create a world to inhabit and they begin to feel very real for me. I don't belong in a psych ward, I don't think, but they become very real, like my own family, and then I have to say goodbye, close the door, and work on other things.

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

One of the things about writing fiction is that you create people that you feel, more or less, as though you know.

What I'm really trying to do is create unique characters.

I don't ever really know where I get my characters from.

It's usually easier for me to begin writing in a character's voice if that person is different from me in some significant way.

One of the ways I think I gain fodder for characters is by watching people.

I always believed in my characters. I lived them.

Sometimes a character is really based on research that you do. Other times it's just based on your imagination or perhaps your conversation with the director. Or sometimes all of the above. It depends on the movie and character.

It's hard to know whether certain characters come to life or not, they either come to have their own life or they don't. I've written many things in which the characters just remain inert.

I always say I write my own novels and the characters don't take control of me, but in fact, I look at the characters in the early stages and I think, 'What is he or she like,' and they slowly come together and they become the person they are.

I think the idea of creating a character from scratch, one that has not been done in a novel or an existing story, is immensely exciting, terrifying and ultimately rewarding.

As a writer, I always think about who my prototype actors are, in my brain. It's helpful, as a writer, to think about that.

When you create a show, and create characters, these people are like children to you.

I just let the character speak to me and things appear.

I think every character I've ever come up with has been based on someone or something I've known.

In my head, at least, the business of spinning stories has no closing time. Twists in my characters' lives, glimpses of their secrets, obstacles to their dreams... all arrive unbidden when I'm getting cash at the ATM, walking my son to camp, singing a hymn at a wedding.

I suppose it's easier for most writers to create and vivify characters of their own gender.

You establish a technique on how to develop characters. Everyone does it their own way, and that's what makes it fun.

I love to evoke the bones and meat and thoughts of characters.

Most of the time, when I'm writing, I'm writing for myself. I'm thinking, 'What will my character say at this time? What will come out of her mouth?' I create individuals so real to me, I sometimes start talking to them. Then I let them loose on the page.

I take stuff from real life and try to make a character out of it. And I try to live the world of the characters a little bit.

In creative writing, I teach that characters arise out of our need for them.

My characters live inside my head for a long time before I actually start a book about them. Then, they become so real to me I talk about them at the dinner table as if they are real. Some people consider this weird. But my family understands.