Susan Vreeland Quotes

I love... What's gratifying to me is when you make/create a character and a human being, a person who lives entirely and who has their own existence, just merely from the words on a page.

Characters are not created on paper or laptop alone.

It's usually easier for me to begin writing in a character's voice if that person is different from me in some significant way.

The hardest thing is to write about people. First and foremost, you have to encounter their humanity. That is the only way you can make them live as characters on the page.

It's hard to know whether certain characters come to life or not, they either come to have their own life or they don't. I've written many things in which the characters just remain inert.

What I look for in any character, good or bad, is whether I can hear him speak. If I can imagine him that clearly, then I can write about him.

One of the things about writing fiction is that you create people that you feel, more or less, as though you know.

My characters live inside my head for a long time before I actually start a book about them. Then, they become so real to me I talk about them at the dinner table as if they are real. Some people consider this weird. But my family understands.

I think the moment you're writing about somebody who's not exactly you, then the challenge is all equal.

I don't tend to picture my characters as actors and actresses.

I don't ever really know where I get my characters from.

I always believed in my characters. I lived them.

Cool? Am I cool? I don't know, but I hope my characters are cool, in the sense of iconic. That's my job, at its very essence.

Sometimes a character is really based on research that you do. Other times it's just based on your imagination or perhaps your conversation with the director. Or sometimes all of the above. It depends on the movie and character.

The great thing about writing is that you always put yourself in the shoes of the character. If you're doing it right, you can see into the heart of all your characters. Usually, when there's a writing problem, it's because you aren't doing that.

My first job is to write the characters as full and authentic people as well as I can.

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 think the idea of creating a character from scratch, one that has not been done in a novel or an existing story, is immensely exciting, terrifying and ultimately rewarding.

As a writer, I always think about who my prototype actors are, in my brain. It's helpful, as a writer, to think about that.

When I'm writing a woman character, I don't think, 'What would a woman do?' I just think, 'What would this character do in this situation?'

When you create a show, and create characters, these people are like children to you.

When I create characters, I create a world to inhabit and they begin to feel very real for me. I don't belong in a psych ward, I don't think, but they become very real, like my own family, and then I have to say goodbye, close the door, and work on other things.

All the great writers root their characters in true human behaviour.

I love making characters real and believable, through my own experience and choices.

I very seldom, very seldom, even know what my characters look like.