Margaret Mahy Quotes

After a while, the character sort of took over.

The characters do have a life of their own; it's weird.

I'm obviously interested in playing characters who have autonomy, who drive the story.

As an author you hope your characters have sparks but truly in the end they have minds of their own!

Because characters are your creations, you are the one who ultimately gets to decide their fate.

Actually, I get a little say in what my character would or wouldn't do.

I rarely return to characters. My characters, at least most of them, are much more a part of that superorganism that is the story than separate and independent creatures.

My characters aren't chess pieces. I don't move them around some big board. I actually care about these fictitious people.

Unlike life, you've got more or less complete control over what's going on in your stories. That's not to say you can make characters do whatever you want them to - they usually have a life of their own if you've done your job properly.

One pleasure of working on a trilogy is watching characters warp and grow over time.

The main characters for 'The Seer and the Sword' made an appearance one night and then haunted me for over five years before I began to write them down. Does that count as inspiration? For me, characters tend to show up, stay on to help with the work of writing their stories, and then occasionally deign to visit after a book is finished.

In the old days, I just could not leave characters alone. Now I just try to keep the ones that still have something in the way of stories to tell.

I think everybody goes through changes, and the same should be said for fictional characters, especially ones that you follow on television.

Never argue with your characters; they know themselves better than you do.

When the characters are really alive before their author, the latter does nothing but follow them in their action, in their words, in the situations which they suggest to him.

Any author of fiction will tell you that characters don't need to be told what to do.

It can certainly happen that characters in more sophisticated stories can 'take over' as they develop and change the author's original ideas. Well, it certainly happens to me at times.

I don't use recurring characters. I do get very interested in my characters while I'm working with them, and I find the process of fitting them into a story, and allowing them to create the story around themselves, fascinating. But no, I don't imagine they have a life outside of what I make for them.

My characters surprise me constantly. My characters are like my friends - I can give them advice, but they don't have to take it. If your characters are real, then they surprise you, just like real people.

I'd like to think I'm not quite so pretentious as to think my characters go off and live their lives once I've written the final page and switched the computer off.

Once you have your characters, they tell you what to write, you don't tell them.

I used to watch dailies and felt I had to keep on top of the character, but I don't feel that any more.

I really fall in love with my characters, even the bad ones. I love getting together with them. They tell me what to do; they take me on a wild and wonderful trip.

For me, one thing I love is having an arc for a character.

In film, because you know where the ending is, characters can change, but in television, you substitute revelation for change, and that can be hard to pull off.