Dana Spiotta Quotes

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

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.

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.

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

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

For some reason, all my characters come to me with their names attached to them. I never have to search for the names.

You spend so much time writing a character the way I did with Buddy Baker and then Green Arrow that you start to care about them. And you almost think of them as people, you know?

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.

My characters are fictional. I get ideas from real people, sometimes, but my characters always exist only in my head.

Writing is a mysterious process, and many ideas come from deep within the imagination, so it's very hard to say how characters come about. Mostly, they just happen.

I find it very hard to sit down and create an idea or especially a new character on command. Usually my characters evolve by accident out of some story context.

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.

I've never been comfortable with the idea of using family and friends in stories. Which is why it takes me longer than something else. Because you make them up out of nothing. Doing that is harder.

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

I start with characters, and then I start writing, and then, if I'm lucky, things start to happen.

The characters in my stories all have quite loud lives in my head. It's a relief to get them on the page. Often they come from people I've noticed or overheard - but that is only a part of them. It's only by writing that I discover who these people really are.

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

I love inventing names, but I also collect unusual names, so that I can look through my notebook and choose one that suits a new character.

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.

To create a character who really interests you, try combining aspects of your favourite fictional character with a real person.

I know some things when I start. I know, let's say, that the play is going to be a 1970s or a 1930s play, and it's going to be about a piano, but that's it. I slowly discover who the characters are as I go along.

I am not somebody who meets a man or a woman somewhere and feels like that is an incredible character that I must write into a play.

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.

I often draw from people in my own experience to base a character on, going back to my days with Mike Leigh.

I admit I do develop characters from little parts of things I've seen others do.