Terry McMillan Quotes

What comes easiest for me is dialogue. Sometimes when my characters are speaking to me, I have to slow them down so that I'm not simply taking dictation.

It's hard to write an Evan Hunter novel because I really am starting from scratch. I'm assuming a new voice each time. The McBain voice is set.

I very much write from characters. Those people start speaking, and then I have them in the house with me and I live with them. Then at some point, it's time to get them out of the house. You can only live with someone like Dr. Georgeous Teitelbaum from THE SISTERS ROSENSWEIG for so long, and then it's time for her to go. But it is very like having the company of these people and trying to craft them in some way into a story.

For me, the dialogue is the easiest part of writing. It just always seems so obvious what a character will say. Maybe it's because I talk too much!

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

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.

Well see, I'm a good enough writer that not everybody in my books talks exactly like I do.

Whenever I write, I write very dialogue-heavy things because I love to force my characters to interact with one another.

First of all, I don't dislike direct storytelling - people seem to think that about my games! Actually, the truth is, I'm just not good at implementing direct narrative in my games.

Listen to the way people talk. If your characters sound real the rest is easy.

Let your characters talk to each other and do things. Spend time with them - they'll tell you who they are and what they're up to.

If I'm doing my job right, then I'm not writing the dialogue; the characters are saying the dialogue, and I'm just jotting it down.

The line of dialogue belongs to the character; the verb is the writer sticking his nose in.

Dialogue comes naturally to me and I can hear the characters' voices in the scenes.

I think I was probably able to flip characters in my head as if I was playing different roles in order to write the different people because you kind of have to be one person, and inhabit him and write from his voice and be her and write her voice. So I think that helped.

When your characters are really living they tell you what they do.

Noah Baumbach writing is really wonderful. I think the way he plays out each character with a unique voice is really impressive, and rhythmically his dialogue works.

I think because I write so many short stories, it's not that hard to come up with characters that are not me.

If you want anybody to have a different voice, you really have to visualize and hear the voices of all these people. Sometimes when I write with specific actors in mind, it helps.

You don’t have the slightest idea of what it means to write a scene and a character in the English language, with images and words chock full of received meaning.

The ability to get inside your character's head in a graphic novel is really fun and useful because one, you can really define the character's voice and two, it's a way easier way to convey what the character's thinking by actually laying out what he's thinking.

Even in dialogue, your own style rules your selection. Do not give yourself a blank check of this kind: 'I'll merely reproduce what I think a character like so-and-so would say.' You have to reproduce it in the way your literary premises dictate.

I don't think that I would ever, while writing, think to myself, "I need a little more psychological realism."

A character has a distinctive voice - you should be able to hear them in your head and conduct a conversation with them while you're out walking. If the answers surprise you, you know it's the character speaking and not you.

What I try to do in writing any character is to put myself in his position.