Kurt Busiek Quotes

I find it very hard to sit down and create an idea or especially a new character on command. Usually my characters evolve by accident out of some story context.

Whichever character I'm using and wherever I am in my mind dictates what kind of story I'm going to tell.

I never have particular actors planned when I'm in the process of writing.

I'm always determined that as a novelist I'm going to go out there and research my characters very thoroughly before I start writing.

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.

When I sit down to write, I don't think about writing about an idea or a given message. I just try to write a story which is hard enough.

I fundamentally believe that no one can teach you how to write - finding out how to write a story is part of the process of creating a story - but you can really learn through exposure to different writing, to different art forms, to different modes of storytelling, and with mentors who are able to get you to step outside your comfort zone.

Often what happens with the writing is that you know where you want to start and you know where you want to end, but the journey is never quite what you predict because the characters take on a life on their own.

I don't ever really know where I get my characters from.

I spent some time, six months or so, ruminating about the characters before I sat down to write 'Faith'.

A novel is utterly your own creation, a very private process. I think of a novel as a noun and a screenplay as a verb. In a novel, very little needs to happen; you can explore a person's memories and thoughts and fantasies. In a screenplay, it's all action; you must push the story on.

How I work is I work from of very character-driven place. And I trust the writers.

One of the greatest things about 'Continuum' is how great the writing is; our writing room is one of the most talented ones I've ever had. It really helps me as far as character development because they paint a very descriptive picture of who the characters are while still letting us have freedom to put in our own ideas.

I write short stories. I write every day.

If you can't sit in a cafe quietly and be ignored, how can you observe human nature and write a story?

Writing a novel is actually searching for victims. As I write I keep looking for casualties. The stories uncover the casualties.

After a while, the characters I'm writing begin to feel real to me. That's when I know I'm heading in the right direction.

I'll often dream about characters before I start writing their stories.

Writing 'when you find me,' it really exposed me to a way of putting together a story I hadn't thought of.

I enjoy the writing process and producing; I enjoy seeing an idea come to fruition. I'm driven by very complex characters. You look at the pilot of 'Breaking Bad,' where there's so much depth to the character, you can't help but be invested when you watch.

I write easily, let's put it that way. And in a novel particularly, the characters take over. And they tell me what to say and they tell me what they're doing. And I'm a third of the way into a novel and then I just let the characters finish it for me.

It's all about letting the story take over.

I start with an idea that is no more than a paragraph long, and expand it slowly into an outline. But I'm always surprised by the directions things take when I actually start writing.

I think the idea of creating a character from scratch, one that has not been done in a novel or an existing story, is immensely exciting, terrifying and ultimately rewarding.

I love sitting at my desk and facing a quiet day with a pen in my hand, and putting myself into a story. It's kind of weird, isn't it? I mean, to absent myself from real life and make up stories is strange, but I started doing this when I was ten years old. It was all I wanted to do.