Ann Hood Quotes

The fact is fiction is always a representation of life, sometimes the lives of famous people.

You always try to do your own thing. One of the things I wanted to do was to write a book that combines some of the best traits of contemporary fantasy with some of the traits of the historical novel.

Part of the joy of writing for kids is that you have to have a real adventure story. You can get really involved in the fantastic in a way that perhaps you can't so much in adult fiction.

When I was a kid, I used to make up all these characters. I love comedy a lot, and I don't get to do it often. Somewhere in the middle, I shifted into doing drama.

People think writing a children's book is something you could do in an afternoon but it's actually really hard.

The characters in my stories, whether historical or fictional, usually prove to be a compilation of influences taken from differing sources, but never drawn from one model.

I love telling stories. Creating a character, a world, a whole universe out of nothing. That part I can't get enough of.

So much of what I do... is coming up with new characters and trying to invent voices for them, and to have people fully fleshed out in my head and to know who can say what in the scene and who these characters are... I love it.

I love telling stories. I love the intimacy between the writer and reader. When you write sketches it's over in two minutes. When you write a book the characters have to have a bit of emotional depth.

I love creating characters and becoming someone else entirely.

I love inventing names, but I also collect unusual names, so that I can look through my notebook and choose one that suits a new character.

I am a huge fan of world-building. I love doing it in my own books, and I love reading it done well.

I love thinking of movie stars who could play the characters in the books I write.

I never wrote my books especially for children.

I love working fictional characters into a piece of history. It plays to my strengths, which are characterization and dialogue, and assists me in my admitted weakness, plot.

If I just sit here, what am I going to do? I don't have a trade. I don't teach or anything. I just love to make up characters and gradually build a story around them.

I absolutely adore writing books with paranormal elements - and I love creating the often-complex worlds and/or plots that go along with those stories - but at the heart of all of that, you have the characters, and when you get down to the core of it, it's spending the time with the characters that is what I truly love.

Picture books are the distillation of an idea, and you have to use just the right words. I love that, and I try to use a lot of action verbs.

When I write a book, characters come to life for me somewhere at the back of my head. I strive to make them flesh and blood in an abstract way, in words.

I liked writing with my friends and making our own little stories. Making a movie like 'Spider-Man' never even crossed my mind.

Fiction is a way for writers to preserve their friendships and their romances!

I try to create new characters in each book I write. That's what makes writing fun and interesting for me.

All the characters in my books are imagined, but all have a bit of who I am in them - much like the characters in your dreams are all formed by who you are.

I love picture books - with picture books, you can use words and pictures as a double act, even tell two different versions of a story at the same time.

No matter what's happening in my life, I can always get lost in the romances of my characters.