Laurie Graham Quotes

The decision for me was whether to have 'The Father' be a book that told a story - from the point of view of this speaker, the daughter - without, as in the earlier books, then having a section on something else and a section on something else.

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.

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.

I would say I have sort of a natural gift for character, and following one person's point of view at a time, and dialogue, but I'm not naturally good at strong plot.

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

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

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.

Never argue with your characters; they know themselves better than you do.

For the most part, my characters don't talk to me. I like to lord over them like some kind of benevolent deity. And, for the most part, my characters go along with it. I write intense character sketches and long, play-like conversations between me and them, but they stay out of the book writing itself.

I try mainly to just focus on character and what my character's point of view is, with each person, and try to figure out story.

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.'

'The Last Of Us,' to me, is just amazing storytelling, because everything's from the character point of view, which even movies don't really do successfully a lot of the time.

As a writer, you have to put yourself in service to the character, get behind their eyes by delineating the world where the character develops. You have to listen to the character and see him inside his certain world to know what conclusions he would draw.

I'm not first and foremost interested in story and the what-happens, but I'm interested in who's telling it and how they're telling it and the effects of whatever happened on the characters and the people.

Like 'Metro' and 'Motor,' 'Troublemaker' is written in first person. The only narration that happens is Barney speaking to the reader/thinking in her head. First person was a big challenge in the graphic novel because we want both men and women of all ages to enjoy 'Troublemaker.'

I think I try to look at all my films and break them down because, at the end of the day, it's about creating characters that you like.

My job is to see the world through the character's eyes.

We have a writing process that's very much you try to create the character in a complicated way and then you let the story lead you to discovering who the character is in a natural way.

I separate myself from my characters as much as possible, but I have these books that I create which are interactive diaries/timelines/memory books/pictures of the character's entire world.

Rather than just making a movie about video games, I wanted to start with the character and what the character was going through.

I've always kind of gravitated toward characters who are a bit distant from the narrator or the point-of-view characters, so that's kind of important to me, to set up a different character who would be the point-of-view character for the story.

Writers often say that characters begin to write themselves, and I never used to believe that. I always thought that was complete hogwash.

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

I'm a novelist, so I can't write about ideas unless they're attached to people.

When I'm creating characters, I definitely think of theme songs. Writing for me is very visual, so I sometimes think of it in terms of a movie with a soundtrack, and try to transfer that to words.