Tom Drury Quotes

When writing a novel a writer should create living people; people not characters. A character is a caricature.

I always say I write my own novels and the characters don't take control of me, but in fact, I look at the characters in the early stages and I think, 'What is he or she like,' and they slowly come together and they become the person they are.

The characters are always the focal point of a book for me, whether I'm writing or reading. I may enjoy a book that has an intriguing mystery or a good plot, but to become one of my real favorites, it has to have great characters.

When I'm breaking in a character like Jessica Jones, I have this amazing opportunity to create her backstory. It's all of the work that happens before I'm ever on camera... Writing 'Bonfire' was like doing all of that fun stuff; it was like 300 pages of prep work.

You decide which characters you want and then do the best you can to bring their humanity to the forefront in the context that you place them in - the crises in which you've placed them.

You can really help support a character if you understand the setting. So for that reason I generally write about Philadelphia.

I tend to spend a lot of time building characters that the reader will believe in and sympathize with.

We set ourselves a limit and cut characters which weren't so vital.

I find screenplays easy to write, my novels being very visual. You see what people look like. The physical action is described.

I'll often dream about characters before I start writing their stories.

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.

If you do a scene and you really like a character in it or a premise in it to write it down and to work on it so that you can have five or six characters that you can pull out in an audition.

It's really about, oh come on, this guy wouldn't say that or he wouldn't do that, you know, it's about the characters, about the story, about the situation.

When you're writing a novel - at least the way I write is I work from what I would call 'emotional atmosphere,' ambiance to ambiance.

When I work on a novel, I usually have one character and a setting in mind.

Once a novel gets going and I know it is viable, I don't then worry about plot or themes. These things will come in almost automatically because the characters are now pulling the story.

I'm still really fascinated with characters and people and telling their stories.

I'm tired of playing freaking cha-chas, the sassy CIA agent, the best friend homegirl. I'm tired of that!

The best shows are always the ones that are very, very low-concept and just about great characters.

When you're building a character, or at least when I'm building a character, you start saying, 'How am I going to make people like him?'

I try to create characters that I am fascinated by on some level or intrigued by or can't stand.

You always have to create the character from the ground up.

Characters are the key to a good book. It took me several novels to comprehend that.

You establish a technique on how to develop characters. Everyone does it their own way, and that's what makes it fun.

In terms of writing characters or stories, at least initially, there's no difference between live-action and animation. A good story is a good story, whatever the medium.