Akira Toriyama Quotes

I grew up doing theatre and spent a long time as a playwright. I still think very visually when I write.

I mean, can I really create a full, three-dimensional character? I don't know anymore. I'm certainly going to try.

The head writer loves that my character is a boor.

To create characters, one must build background. And one of the tools we use is improvisation.

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 do write long, long character notes - family background, history, details of appearance - much more than will ever appear in the novel. I think this is what lifts a book from that early calculated, artificial stage.

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

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.

My characters are not plastic.

The characters can't be wittier than people are in real life. They have to be character witty.

I like to take a character and develop it.

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.

Given what I do to my characters, I'm not sure I'd want to meet any of them.

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

During all of my writing career - this includes when I was writing plays and my other screenplays - I don't recall ever writing a negative character, which does not mean that my characters aren't flawed or do not make mistakes. In actual fact, they all are quite flawed.

This may sound strange, but although I feel like I know everything about my characters, the brand of shampoo they use, how many cavities they have, their greatest fear, I don't actually see their faces.

The JBL character, I had had in mind for a long time, a character very similar.

For 'The Bestseller'... there was hardly any research, but I had to give each person a quirk and develop their stories so that it would relate to who they are.

I'm interested in characters. I love them, and I love to write them.

As a writer, you understand how hard it is to build up backstory for characters, so you can have impactful moments. You have to build toward something and then pay it off.

I thought of Jeff Bridges in 'Hell or High Water' and Ben Foster, and I kept trying very hard not to, because you're terrified you're going to write this thing that then feeds specifically to this one person that then won't do it.

I wrote a story about a character who looks like Harry Styles. But it has nothing to do with Harry Styles at all.

I think all interesting characters have some kind of a complex.

I'm not sure what my material would have been if I'd have started earlier. I probably would have started with 'Damsels in Distress' kinds of films because that's the kind of comedy I was writing in college. So I didn't really have any life experience to work off of.