ContraPoints Quotes

When you're creating a character out of nothing, you have to make all the guesses as to how they walk, how they talk, how they think. It was all there on the table for us to pick and choose for Murrow.

When you write, you hear the characters speaking to you as you take dictation from what they say. And obviously, they had particular personalities when you hear them.

So much of what I do... is coming up with new characters and trying to invent voices for them, and to have people fully fleshed out in my head and to know who can say what in the scene and who these characters are... I love it.

Especially when I write, I want to get out of people's heads and have them speak and have them get dressed and have them go to work.

I take stuff from real life and try to make a character out of it. And I try to live the world of the characters a little bit.

I plot the first 5 or 6 chapters quite minutely, and also the end. So I know where I am going but not how I'm going to get there, which gives characters the chance to develop organically, as happens in real life as you get to know a person.

I'm a novelist, so I can't write about ideas unless they're attached to people.

I always do make a back story for myself, but I'm not sure how necessary it is. I just like to.

It's usually easier for me to begin writing in a character's voice if that person is different from me in some significant way.

I just love to be able to actually build a character.

I love writing letters. In order to write a novel in first person, I think I needed an addressee.

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.

When I'm writing fiction, I'm sort of interested by the fact that somehow or other I can have the feeling of actually seeing things through someone else's eyes.

It's all about letting the story take over.

In television writing, you want to hear what the characters say as opposed to giving them something to say. It's the same with the cartoons.

Successful fiction does not need to be validated by 'real life'; I cringe whenever a writer is asked how much of a novel is 'real'.

What I look for in any character, good or bad, is whether I can hear him speak. If I can imagine him that clearly, then I can write about him.

I'm not interested in cutting the feet off my characters or stretching them to make them fit my certain political view.

One has to be able to twist and change and distort characters, play with them like clay, so everything fits together. Real people don't permit you to do that.

No I don't really write thinking about specific actors because it can get in the way a little bit.

I try to talk about things I know about. But my characters are more of a combination of people or how I imagine people would feel.

I hate the analyzing thing. People say, 'Why do you think your character did that? I don't know. I'm not an analyst, and they're not in psychotherapy. Unless it's a film where they're in therapy.

I'm not in the business of meddling with people's destinies - and yes, my characters are real people to me. They have histories and thoughts and yearnings and hurts and misgivings and pleasures that don't belong to me.

George has only got to ring me. His imagination is so wonderful, I'd do any character he might create.