Lori Foster Quotes

For me, screenwriting is all about setting characters in motion and as a writer just chasing them. They should tell you what they'll do in any scene you put them in.

The main characters for 'The Seer and the Sword' made an appearance one night and then haunted me for over five years before I began to write them down. Does that count as inspiration? For me, characters tend to show up, stay on to help with the work of writing their stories, and then occasionally deign to visit after a book is finished.

I tend not to know what the plot is or the story is or even the theme. Those things come later, for me.

For me, emotion comes first. If I have to change a scene, invent a scene, change dialogue, or put Graff by the lake in order to feel that dynamic, and the end results feels like 'Ender's Game,' then hopefully it works.

Sometimes I know what my characters are moving away from or toward; more often I just wait and see. For instance, though I knew Sinkler in 'The Trusty' was going for water, I did not know that he would meet a fetching young farm wife until I got him into her front yard.

I remember the guest stars who came, they were always trying to find a new plot for their characters because they wanted to stay. It was really a great working environment.

Often the starting point for characters, for me, is finding a little, most minor detail, and I'll go from there.

I do novels a bit backward. I look for a situation, a milieu first, and then I wait to see who walks into it.

Variety of characters and themes bring out the best in me.

It's much easier for me to think in terms of character movement and emotion and story rather than, 'What are some wacky hijinks we can throw together?'

As an author you hope your characters have sparks but truly in the end they have minds of their own!

If I'm practicing making up what the characters will do, it's never good. In fact, when I catch myself doing that, I try to get rid of that section, and try and let them start making the decisions.

I have always argued, in a good novel, interesting things happen to interesting people.

I am not an analytical writer. Once I flesh out my characters and decide on the elements of my plot, the story unfolds in my head almost as though it was a movie reel.

A novel is utterly your own creation, a very private process. I think of a novel as a noun and a screenplay as a verb. In a novel, very little needs to happen; you can explore a person's memories and thoughts and fantasies. In a screenplay, it's all action; you must push the story on.

This is the story, this is your character, I have the sense of the landscape, I have the sense of the scene, I have all that stuff. But I'm also looking for something else to happen, an accident or something. You're focused on the story you intend to tell and then you have to have a peripheral net out to catch these accidents.

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'm writing a story, which takes me a year or more, I can feel my character living with me - they're responding to whatever funny, familial, or social situation I'm in, and I think about their responses constantly.

I can move my characters through it easily, because I understand the background; I've really studied it.

You just drop a character like this that and the other and it's done.

I rarely return to characters. My characters, at least most of them, are much more a part of that superorganism that is the story than separate and independent creatures.

Creating characters is like throwing together ingredients for a recipe. I take characteristics I like and dislike in real people I know, or know of, and use them to embellish and define characters.

When the characters are really alive before their author, the latter does nothing but follow them in their action, in their words, in the situations which they suggest to him.

Whenever you can manoeuvre your characters into a situation where they both have a good argument to make, you're on the right track.

It's rare that I actually have a story in my head. I have events or 'what's the next move?' Like, Maggie, 'where's she going to go in this story, where's she going to end up?' Then the story has to fill in the in-between, and that comes as I'm starting it.