Aaron Ehasz Quotes

I think you have to love the characters that you write. I don't know how you could possibly write a TV show where you didn't love the characters.

I don't worry about whether a character is likable, as long as the character is believable.

I'm focused on finding characters I connect to.

I like my characters to be ones I think about long after I've finished reading the script.

As a writer, you have to realize that people want to like the characters, so you have to be careful to keep them involved.

Character development is what I value most as a reader of fiction. If an author can manage to create the sort of characters who feel fully real, who I find myself worrying about while I'm walking through the grocery store aisles a week later, that to me is as close to perfection as it gets.

A lot of times in movies, especially in sequels, the characters become caricatures and just sort of improv machines and joke machines, rather than people you can actually connect to.

I am a firm believer that a good plot makes for a fun enough read, but it's not what binds us. If we don't care about the characters, we won't care - not in a lasting way - about what's happening to them.

If the character is true, the movie will fall into place. Or at least that's what you hope.

The bottom line always remains the same: What is the basic humanity of the character? How do I make them resonate with the reader?

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.

If you have great characters, then your reader becomes emotionally invested in those people.

Every character, if fleshed out properly, is being taken seriously.

If we get caught up in a story, it's because we've started to care about the characters, and that can only happen if we've moved beneath the surface.

The first thing, when I read the script, is that I need to care about what happens and feel compelled by the story and engaged by the characters. It needs to resonate with me, even if what the characters are going through is not something that I have experienced in my life. I have to feel like it has some sort of meaning to me.

I have to have a character worth caring about. I tend not to start writing books about people I don't have a lot of sympathy for because I'm just going to be with them too long.

I do not choose characters because I think, 'Wow, that woman is so strong.' I chose these characters with utmost conviction because I think they were realistic enough to exist, and I really liked the scripts.

I've always wanted my characters to have more dimension and realistic cores than the ingenue material often provides. It's been a challenge.

Readers embrace all kinds of characters as long as they are written with emotional truth.

I can always tell when a filmmaker doesn't care about his or her characters; they just care about setting them up to kill them off.

My characters are not plastic.

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.

It's your job to come up with compelling characters who speak to an individual authenticity. If I'm not interested in the characters, I can't go on. I have to be fascinated by them.

I believe that if writers want their readers to care about a character, they have to care themselves. I have to root for a detective who screws up as much as Thorne does, who shares my birthday, my North London stomping ground, and my love of country music, both alt and cheesy.

It's really important to stay engaged and involved in the character.