Kelli O'Hara Quotes

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?'

My characters are not plastic.

I wanted more in depth ideas about the character and it never came.

There's a horrible fallacy that exists in the popular discussion of fiction these days: the idea that a successful central character need be 'likeable' or 'sympathetic'. It is surely more important that they be human, no? More crucial that they breathe?

I think my best quality as a writer is the ability to craft complicated, nuanced, interesting characters.

I choose grey characters, as I enjoy playing a human character. I don't shy away from showing the shortcomings of my characters.

I think books with weak or translucent plots can survive if the character being drawn along the path is rich, interesting and multi-faceted. The opposite is not true.

The world is full of novels in which characters simply say and do. There are certainly legitimate genres in which this is sufficient. But in real and lasting writing the character is.

A lot of times, scripts are written so the character is all one way. Even with 'Bringing Out the Dead,' the character was written a little more generic.

The most I could hope for is to come and try and develop a character who is interesting, who is interesting to me, who is interesting to fans and who could contribute to the storytelling that is 'Law & Order: SVU.'

Also, in my acting, I feel very much like a storyteller, exploring the flaws of the characters that I interpret. I look for the imperfections, and I love a character that is just so flawed.

What helps writers, and ultimately, obviously, helps the actors - who should serve the words that the writer puts on the page - is if the character has damages, because then the writers can cultivate and excavate, like a dentist going into a tooth.

I'm sorry, but to ask an audience these days to invest three hours in a show requires your heroine be an understandable and fully rounded character.

Everyone likes a bit of variety. I'm sure none of my readers only want to read about anti-heroes or villainous protagonists any more than they only want to read about square-jawed heroes doing the right thing. I just write characters than entertain me and hope they'll be ones that other people want to read about, too.

You know, we have to take these characters - who, granted, have their separate personalities but, on a lot of levels, are pretty two-dimensional - and make them into people with flaws, with insecurities.

I always look for interesting, complex characters. You know, interesting, well-written material.

Normally you read a screenplay - and I read a lot of them - and the characters don't feel like people. They feel like plot devices or cliches or stereotypes.

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.

Most of my films have a lot of character development and exploration, whereas in most horror movies the characters are just cardboard.

I create my own backstory regardless of if I'm told something about the background or not. There's always more that you can develop in your head that makes a character more layered, more honest.

To me, the struggle is to try to make a less-well-written or less-well-rounded character and find who they are. If you really get it, and it's all on the page, then it's really just gonna pop out at you.

There is more meat and mileage in complex characters, like 'Running with Scissors.'

I like the characters that have some redeeming quality or if it's interesting to me in any way.

These people I play are not usually wish-fulfillment characters.

It's always nice to do the flashbacks. That's what's so great about 'Scandal' is that we get to do flashbacks and then keep figuring out and discovering more things about our characters that make them fuller.