Kurt Busiek Quotes

I don't really think in terms of genre, I think in terms of story and character.

When I'm writing, I try to have the mask of my character on as I'm walking through the world. When I'm not at my desk, the rest of the time, I try to stay in that character and see the world the way that character would It's almost like method acting in a way — keeping the character close the way the actor keeps a script close and always tries to be in character.

I don't think you can teach someone how to come up with good characters or a story.

I try to be true to the characters that I've created and sometimes I disagree with them, but their opinions about the story and the characters really matter to me.

Stop trying to write sentences and start trying to write stories.

I just love to be able to actually build a character.

When I wrote for TV, I was always thinking in terms of character and story. After fifteen years, it became hard-wired in me.

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.

For myself, the only way I know how to make a book is to construct it like a collage: a bit of dialogue here, a scrap of narrative, an isolated description of a common object, an elaborate running metaphor which threads between the sequences and holds different narrative lines together.

No, you don't have to start your play with a premise. You can start with a character or an incident, or even a simple thought. This thought or incident grows, and the story slowly unfolds itself. You have time to find your premise in the mass of your material later. The important thing is to find it.

I find my characters and stories in many varied places; sometimes they pop out of newspaper articles, obscure historical texts, lively dinner party conversations and some even crawl out of the dusty remote recesses of my imagination.

So many stories, and to choose which ones to tell and how to tell them. The words, they will tap me on the shoulder and they will speak to me: 'Tell me! Tell me!' The stories choose me.

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

When you're crafting a character, it's good to have a lot of influences.

A book begins with an image or character or situation that I care about deeply.

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.

As a storyteller, when you see somebody who is the character you envisioned, you feel this energy in the room.

Characters are not created on paper or laptop alone.

A character takes shape in the act of writing. You start with something, and you add or subtract.

I think I'm good at metaphors and descriptions. Plot doesn't come naturally to me, so I work really hard at it.

As writers, we are sketching people all the time when we write fiction.

I don't just look at things as an actor. I've also written several films, so I look at it as a storyteller and I know if something worked and should have been in there for the benefit of the story and the benefit of the character.

I just love that feeling of being in another world, of creating characters and watching where they go.

There's a kind of tension that if I'm getting a story right I can feel right away, and I don't feel that when I try to write a novel. I kind of want a moment that's explosive, and I want everything gathered into that.

No author can create a character out of nothing. He must have a model to give him a starting point; but then his imagination goes to work, he builds him up, adding a trait here, a trait there, which his model did not possess.