Elizabeth McCracken 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?'

When I'm writing a woman character, I don't think, 'What would a woman do?' I just think, 'What would this character do in this situation?'

You have to sort of see the way that the character behaves, and what the character says and does, and claim it in the same way that you claim anything, really.

I don't write a whole lot about one person that exists in reality; it's usually characteristics of different people that I combine into a character. I tend to think through and try and make characters behave in a natural way. I follow the character and think about what they would do, what decisions they would make.

Well first of all you have to make the character strong so that people can follow that. And then hopefully that character can integrate with the background of the social situation that people can recognize.

Usually when I'm trying to establish character, I try and find out where they live.

What I'm really trying to do is create unique characters.

It always takes awhile to find out who the characters are.

I put heavy emphasis on the characters.

In creative writing, I teach that characters arise out of our need for them.

The question of likability is a bit of a puzzler for me. You know, I don't write people with likability in mind. It's more whether or not I find them compelling.

You invent this massive lagoon of information without any pressure to do anything apart from create this person, a person that might fit the bill that is the character that is emerging from the research.

I know the relationships, and I already know my characters and how I'm going to reveal my characters to my readers - how I'm going to feed them information about that character. That stuff doesn't have to be in my outline.

I always do that for all of my characters. I built a music playlist for her... with songs she really likes.

In terms of the parallels, I've never related less to a character than Riggan.

I love creating new characters that are whatever they are.

That was the most important thing to me: making sure 'Gardner Elliot' was likeable and funny and interesting. I took my time before filming to chat with Peter, the director, to create this character.

When I look at a character, I never look at the size of the role. I always look at the whole person, no matter how much they're featured in the movie.

You have to start from a place of trying to create a character.

You can't make the audience fall in love with a character you don't like.

Don't go around asking the question, 'Is this character likeable?' and expect that to be compatible with serious literary endeavours. That's not what it's about.

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.

Nobody wants to play a one-dimensional character.

When I act, I try to understand the character, why she's behaving like that.

Early on in the writing, there is often a sentence that pins down a character for me.