Nelson DeMille Quotes

Some of my characters are a mixture of various aspects of people I have met. others are pure invention.

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.

My characters are usually composites. I wish I could pretend that I make up all of these characters, but no. I steal from people. But people will say to me, "Oh, that's me!" and I'm thinking, no, that's not you!

The librarian, the warrior, the free spirit... archetypes are a great jumping off point to help clarify where we want to go with a character.

I don't base any character on a real person, and really don't do composites either. I make them up.

I've never purposefully based a character on any one person I know, but I'm certain there are amalgamations that exist.

I don't know what the character is going to be. We sit down and we create a character, and all of the characters in all of my films are made like that.

Writers are magpies, and we collect details about people and we use them for fictional characters.

Most characters are composed of snippets here and there of people I've known, and all rolled into the character I've created. They do become like their own people.

When I'm putting the character together I try to find music that I think fits the character.

I never base characters on real people - you can get into so much trouble that way!

The author can always delve into his own personality and find aspects of himself with which he can dress his characters.

Mike Leigh encourages you to choose a person that you know to base your character on. You write a whole list of people that you know and you go through that list in great depth with him. And then he chooses one of those people from your list.

I never base characters on real people. There are people who do that but I really don't know how to do it.

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.

Usually when you're doing concepts for a character, you just try a couple different things to see what sticks.

A lot of times characters are combinations of people I come across in life. I people-watch a lot.

I try to talk about things I know about. But my characters are more of a combination of people or how I imagine people would feel.

I take stuff from real life and try to make a character out of it. And I try to live the world of the characters a little bit.

Sometimes after a compliment about my characterization skills, I'm asked if I model my characters on real people. Emphatically, no. And sort of, yes.

I don't really base any of my characters on specific people that I know, although my characters are informed by the kind of people who live in my community.

A lot of my characters are born out of a small grain in a person that I heighten and take to that next level. They're not based on anyone I've ever met, but they are these extreme versions of something.

Most writers, I'm afraid, live very boring lives sitting in front of a screen. However, having said that: every writer puts a bit of themselves into the characters to bring them alive.

I got a call from a mutual friend of ours, Charles King, who's also the executive producer. [Steven Caple Jr and I] had a conversation about it. I read it. We kind of finished each other's sentences when it came to the nuances and personality flaws that the character had, and some stereotypes and things we were trying to stay away from. We agreed on that as well. He just kind of allowed me to run rampant with the ideas. As we paced ourselves through, we developed Turquoise.

The easier you make it look, the more difficult it is. Creating characters out of nothing, and making them interesting - and that's another advice I would give to writers.