Amanda Abbington Quotes

I abhor badly-written characters and any character, be it man, woman, any character in the film. If it is a well-written character, it will come across as strong.

The thing with videogame characters is that they tend to be really undercooked, and people don't take the time to really flesh them out. They don't treat them with the respect that a writer writing characters in any other medium would treat their character.

The world is full of novels in which characters simply say and do. There are certainly legitimate genres in which this is sufficient. But in real and lasting writing the character is.

For every book that I write... I develop a history for each person and make sure they are well rounded and flawed. You have to know everything about them from their shoe size, to where they went to school, to what their first pet was, to what they like to eat, to what they want out of life.

Also, in my acting, I feel very much like a storyteller, exploring the flaws of the characters that I interpret. I look for the imperfections, and I love a character that is just so flawed.

I've always wanted my characters to have more dimension and realistic cores than the ingenue material often provides. It's been a challenge.

What helps writers, and ultimately, obviously, helps the actors - who should serve the words that the writer puts on the page - is if the character has damages, because then the writers can cultivate and excavate, like a dentist going into a tooth.

I wanted more in depth ideas about the character and it never came.

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

Everyone likes a bit of variety. I'm sure none of my readers only want to read about anti-heroes or villainous protagonists any more than they only want to read about square-jawed heroes doing the right thing. I just write characters than entertain me and hope they'll be ones that other people want to read about, too.

I always look for interesting, complex characters. You know, interesting, well-written material.

I create my own backstory regardless of if I'm told something about the background or not. There's always more that you can develop in your head that makes a character more layered, more honest.

To me, the struggle is to try to make a less-well-written or less-well-rounded character and find who they are. If you really get it, and it's all on the page, then it's really just gonna pop out at you.

I like the characters that have some redeeming quality or if it's interesting to me in any way.

You have to add some sort of dimension to each of your characters because everyone has their own layers.

I want to do interesting characters with depth, which are a part of great stories. In fact, if the character is quirky and challenging, that's even better.

This may sound strange, but although I feel like I know everything about my characters, the brand of shampoo they use, how many cavities they have, their greatest fear, I don't actually see their faces.

Stories are important, but I'm really into characters, and if you can give birth to a good one, that's true success.

I think my best quality as a writer is the ability to craft complicated, nuanced, interesting characters.

I feel like a lot of characters on TV don't have the time to tell that many aspects of a character's story and personality.

The film industry is mostly about unidimensional characters.

I want to give my characters nuance.

I think all interesting characters have some kind of a complex.

It's always fun to layer a character, to make the character a little bit more dynamic than it is on paper.

Characterisation is more important to me than the script. A decent story and extraordinary characters can do wonders for a film, but you cannot do it the other way around.