Deanna Raybourn Quotes

You've got to leave the reader with more than just a name and a costume - they need to know who the character is, what they're like, what kind of attitude they have, what sort of role they play.

I usually start with a repulsive character and go on from there.

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.

I tend to come up with people more than situations - most of my books start with a character.

When you're building a character, or at least when I'm building a character, you start saying, 'How am I going to make people like him?'

When I develop a character, I usually start by creating a backstory with whatever information I have access to.

Developing characters is a strange thing. In the beginning they are abstract and I wonder how to move on from there.

For me, plot always comes out of character, so I had to be sure of my characters.

Often the starting point for characters, for me, is finding a little, most minor detail, and I'll go from there.

When you create a character, you create it for yourself - you do whatever you want. It's your job to explore it in as many different avenues as you can in order to make it a fully wounded character.

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

I like to enter my characters through a physical form first. The first thing I find is the regime of the character - when he wakes up tomorrow, what activities does this person engage in - that's my entry point. Once I get that, then it becomes easy for me.

When writing a novel a writer should create living people; people not characters. A character is a caricature.

What makes characters real are details, and if you're crafting a person from scratch, you're probably not going to pay as much attention to a question like, 'Does this person bite their nails?'

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

I live intimately with my characters before starting a book. I cut out pictures of them for my wall. I do time lines for each major character and a time line for the entire novel: What is going on in the world as my characters struggle with their problems?

I'm drawn particularly to stories that evolve out of the character of the protagonist.

Every single film I've done, it's about the character.

Creating characters is like throwing together ingredients for a recipe. I take characteristics I like and dislike in real people I know, or know of, and use them to embellish and define characters.

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

I try to begin with a strong grasp of my characters. Even if it's schematic, I need it clear in my head who these people are.

I think action should be revealed through character, so if you have a plot problem, it's probably a character problem.

I like to take a character and develop it.

You always have to create the character from the ground up.

I have a cheat-sheet for each one of my characters about their personality, the way they look, etc. So there is no possible way that I could have writer's block.