Genndy Tartakovsky Quotes

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

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

I mean, can I really create a full, three-dimensional character? I don't know anymore. I'm certainly going to try.

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

You really have to create everything in order to come away with a full human being on screen.

A character who is thought-out is not born, he or she is contrived. A born character is round, a thought-out character is flat.

I like to take a character and develop it.

I'm about my characters.

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

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

I put heavy emphasis on the characters.

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

I want to give my characters nuance.

There is nothing like being able to develop a three-dimensional character over a long period of time. Sometimes you aren't able to fully portray a character because you only have a couple of scenes to do it in, and you don't get the full life and background of that character.

The thing with videogame characters is that they tend to be really undercooked, and people don't take the time to really flesh them out. They don't treat them with the respect that a writer writing characters in any other medium would treat their character.

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?'

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.

My first job is to write the characters as full and authentic people as well as I can.

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.

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 seem to have to make my characters family before I can access their hearts in any way that matters.