Jojo Moyes Quotes

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 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've got to write about my character every day. I've got to find out where he lives, what bus he catches to school, and stuff like that. You've got to know every little thing about him so when you do it, it feels natural.

I think you've got to understand your character and where they're coming from.

A character who is thought-out is not born, he or she is contrived. A born character is round, a thought-out character is flat.

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.

Usually when I'm trying to establish character, I try and find out where they live.

I build my characters from the day they're born to the first page of the script.

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

You're living with these characters for years and years, you need to have a lock on who they are as people, what they like, what they don't like, what they experience, and what they go through.

As actors, you don't actually need to know the future of the character. You just need to know the backgrounds.

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

What makes characters real are details, and if you're crafting a person from scratch, you're probably not going to pay as much attention to a question like, 'Does this person bite their nails?'

I believe the most intricate plot won't matter much to readers if they don't care about the characters, especially in a series. So I try to focus hard on making each character, whether villain or hero, have an interesting flaw that readers can relate to.

I live intimately with my characters before starting a book. I cut out pictures of them for my wall. I do time lines for each major character and a time line for the entire novel: What is going on in the world as my characters struggle with their problems?

I know all actors are different, but I've never sat down and asked the writers, 'Where are we headed? Am I good or bad?'

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.

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.

Well, first of all, you read the script a million times. Because what the script gives you are given circumstances. Given circumstances are all the facts of your character.

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

What helps writers, and ultimately, obviously, helps the actors - who should serve the words that the writer puts on the page - is if the character has damages, because then the writers can cultivate and excavate, like a dentist going into a tooth.

'Longmire' is more of a show about the characters, and you couldn't pay a bigger compliment than to want to know more about my character, or the characters on the show.

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

I love those preliminary conversations about who a character is. You try on wigs, shoes and clothes. It's preferable when it's not about looking pretty. It can get a little dull to just be cute. We talk about things like, maybe my character can't afford these Christian Louboutins.