Kathryn Harrison Quotes

If you have great characters, then your reader becomes emotionally invested in those people.

I love all my characters. I love their weaknesses and flaws. I feel like they're all my best friends and I adore being with them.

Being able to stay with a character over the course of years is a gift.

Every time I talk about 'The Shield' I kind of talk about it from three perspectives, as if I'm three people, because I'm a fan of the show. I'm in love with all the other characters and their journeys and their work. But then, as an actor, I love getting this kind of rich material and having to do it. As my character, did my journey finish?

I am a firm believer that a good plot makes for a fun enough read, but it's not what binds us. If we don't care about the characters, we won't care - not in a lasting way - about what's happening to them.

In 'The Prophet' I really fell in love with those characters, there was an emotional connection there that I don't think I've had in a while. It made me think it would be nice to stick with the characters for a little bit and see what happens.

Besides the mistakes that are pointed out, I love the way readers become involved with the characters. When readers start asking about character motivations instead of concentrating on the special effects, it means you're connecting with them on a personal level.

Characters develop as the book progresses, but any that start to bore me end up in the wastepaper basket. In real life, we may have to put up with tedious people, but not in novels.

Audiences are just like us as writers - we grow attached to characters. In certain ways you don't want them to change.

I love the long-form format of television. I love being able to develop a character, over a long period of time.

I love seeing a story evolve over several books and watching characters develop.

I think what good television does well is that it shows characters evolving.

You treat characters like people you meet in life-friends or mentors.

There are characters that become more popular as we fall in love with them.

I think you have to love the characters that you write. I don't know how you could possibly write a TV show where you didn't love the characters.

To read a character I'm not sympathizing with is generally quite a good, attractive proposition because I've got somewhere to go, I've got work to do, to try to understand why they behave like they behave, to relate entirely and understand them and to be completely emotionally connected. That is much more fun 99 percent of the time.

I think it is important that you care about the characters, and you are not just waiting for the next action sequence but have a vested interested in what happens to them.

I love series television because it's so much fun to have that much opportunity to paint the character.

There's something about the alchemy of the show - the actors, the writers, the directors, the editors - that makes 'Parenthood' unique. You get so deeply embedded with these characters because you go through life with them, and that's our priority.

What I discovered is I don't like to repeat lead characters because one of the most pleasurable things in a book to me is learning about the lead.

I think often times on Joss Whedon's shows he can make you hate a character for a period and then love the character. He does it effortlessly.

There's something pretty awesome about staying with a character and growing.

It's really important to stay engaged and involved in the character.

These people are real to me, and situations keep coming up where their emergence feels natural. It's like meeting old friends. I hope readers feel the same way.

I'm hopefully making the reader feel a lot about the characters and then about their own life.