Sue Monk Kidd Quotes

Because I write fiction, I don't write autobiography, and to me they are very different things. The first-person narrative is a very intimate thing, but you are not addressing other people as 'I' - you are inhabiting that 'I.'

My preferred style is to write in first person, so I always have to play around with possible narrator voices until I find something that works.

When one is writing a novel in the first person, one must be that person.

I'm very comfortable writing in the first person; it dives into the character in a way that's difficult if you're writing in the third person.

I like to write first-person because I like to become the character I'm writing.

When I'm writing from a character's viewpoint, in essence I become that character; I share their thoughts, I see the world through their eyes and try to feel everything they feel.

First person narrative is a very effective tool but you have to know as a writer how to make it work.

When you pick up a book, everyone knows it's imaginary. You don't have to pretend it's not a book. We don't have to pretend that people don't write books. That omniscient third-person narration isn't the only way to do it. Once you're writing in the first person, then the narrator is a writer.

I'm such a first-person writer.

Writing in the first person, you immediately open yourself up to the idea that there's a connection between you and the narrator.

I think one of the hardest things about doing a book in the first person is that to a certain extent each day, when you begin to do your work, you're climbing into somebody else's skin.

I've always kind of ripped from real life to some degree or at least how I'm feeling in the moment. In fact, maybe that's really it. In anything I've ever written, all the characters sound like me, which I don't think is a bad thing.

I find it an easy way into writing pieces is to think what the character's voice is like, and start from there.

I love writing letters. In order to write a novel in first person, I think I needed an addressee.

I normally write in the first person, and my narrators are as real to me as any of the people I have worked with. They live and breathe in my imagination.

In prose, leaps of logic can be made while the protagonist thinks about things and arrives at conclusions. Even with voiceover, there's no real way of having an inner voice without it taking over the entire story.

A novel can do something that films and TV usually can't - a glimpse inside the characters' heads. I write very tight third person point of view, so the reader is right behind the eyes of each character, seeing what they see and feeling what they feel.

I have an idea for a story, and if the idea is going to work, then one of the characters steps forward, and I hear her voice telling the story. This is what has happened with all the books I've written in the first person.

I put a lot of myself into my characters when I write.

All my characters have got a big slice of me in them. A big piece of me, because it's my dialogue and this is the way I think and talk.

There are very few works of fiction that take you inside the heads of all characters. I tell my writing students that one of the most important questions to ask yourself when you begin writing a story is this: Whose story is it? You need to make a commitment to one or perhaps a few characters.

Understanding POV is essential, or ought to be.

I don't really distinguish between sympathy and honesty when I'm writing. The two go together - I'm interested in inhabiting my characters, seeing the world through their eyes.

I'm starting to think my narrators' sentences are getting too big for them, and they are getting to sound a bit samey and, more disturbingly, a bit too much like me.

I think all characters are facets of the writer. In a way, they have to be if you're going to write them convincingly.