Lucy Dacus Quotes

Your source material is the people you know, not those you don't know, but every character is an extension of the author's own personality.

When you pick up a book, everyone knows it's imaginary. You don't have to pretend it's not a book. We don't have to pretend that people don't write books. That omniscient third-person narration isn't the only way to do it. Once you're writing in the first person, then the narrator is a writer.

I'm not angry; I write about angry characters. When I'm doing that, I'm happy. Just like when I'm writing about Mickey Sabbath being lustful, I'm not feeling lustful; I'm happy.

When I write, I try to become different characters.

The language fictional characters use is chosen for effect, at least if the author is concentrating.

I find it an easy way into writing pieces is to think what the character's voice is like, and start from there.

It's often wrong to write for specific actors because one ends up using what is least interesting about them, their mannerisms and habits. I prefer not to write for specific people.

I love writing letters. In order to write a novel in first person, I think I needed an addressee.

The more gifted and talkative one's characters are, the greater the chances of their resembling the author in tone or tint of mind.

Since I grew up, I have never deliberately used any technique at all other than the physical shaping of my tale so that it more or less resembles what has been thought of as a novel for these last two hundred years.

Because I write fiction, I don't write autobiography, and to me they are very different things. The first-person narrative is a very intimate thing, but you are not addressing other people as 'I' - you are inhabiting that 'I.'

I think all characters are facets of the writer. In a way, they have to be if you're going to write them convincingly.

When I'm writing, I'm writing for a particular actor. When a lot of writers are writing, they're writing an idea. So they're not really writing in a specific voice.

First-person narrators is the way I know how to write a book with the greatest power and chance of artistic success.

Once he became a series character, I made the conscious choice that he would never act like a series character, never wink at the reader, never pull his punches. Better for him, better for me.

When I started off with Trainspotting, it was the way the characters came to me. That's how they sounded to me. It seemed pretentious to sound any other way. I wasn't making any kind of political statement.

Sometimes, like in 'Invisible Monsters,' I get too out of control, and instead of a plot point every chapter, I want a plot point in every sentence.

I think, when I write, one of the things that I'm really attempting to do is I'm attempting to humanize my characters.

I write about characters that interest me. And I don't think of my books as being forms of entertainment.

Usually, when I write a novel, it takes me about 100 pages to figure out the voice of the narrator.

If you're going to make a statement, I think you should write it in prose and make a statement. If you have characters who are mouthpieces for a point of view, then you have to be very clever about disguising it.

Writers often say that characters begin to write themselves, and I never used to believe that. I always thought that was complete hogwash.

I've written short stories from male perspectives before, and I've never had a problem with it as long as I've understood the character's emotions and motivations.

Writing can give full meaning to characters and avoid pure stereotype.

In my early writing, all of my characters were exactly the same person. They all spoke the same, made the same types of jokes, reacted the same, etc. I think they were all just me in disguise.