Charlie Kaufman Quotes

I write characters that are based on elements of people I know and experiences I've really had.

When I'm writing it's as if I'm the observer. It's as if that computer screen there -it used to be the typewriter - just kind of dissolves and there's this whirling tunnel of mist and there's a kind of proscenium arch, and then there are my characters, and they say what they say, and I laugh sometimes in surprise at what they say.

Writing, even though it's hard work, is really a joy when you get these characters to come alive. It's hard to trace where they come from. I can't say that I am sitting here one night at nine o'clock and that a character occurs to me. The magic for me happens at the typewriter.

If you get the characters right you've done sometimes nearly half the work. I sometimes find I get the characters right then the characters will often help me write the book - not what they look like that's not very important - what people look like is not about their character. You have to describe the shape they leave in the world, how they react to things, what effect they have on people and you do that by telling their story.

I think because I write so many short stories, it's not that hard to come up with characters that are not me.

I often need physical gesture to balance dialogue. If I write in public, every time I need to know what a character is doing with his hand or foot, I can look up and study people and find compelling gestures that I can harvest. Writing in public gives you that access to a junkyard of details all around you.

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

When I'm writing, I try to have the mask of my character on as I'm walking through the world.

As I got farther and farther along in the series I did less and less preparation. I didn't use outlines or sketches. I just had a vague idea of what I wanted to tell and then the dialogue just came to me as I was inking the page.

I think of it as the lasagna approach to writing because I'm always adding layers. I'll sometimes do it layer by layer, with dialogue, attribution, action, objects in the scene, setting... It can be sometimes that delineated.

I love writing dialogue, and I think a lot of my writing is visual and very cinematic.

I tend to write one character at a time. But I don't write the entirety of one character at a time.

One thing I like about trying to write is that I can possibly write myself a role. Otherwise, you're at the mercy of whatever roles are out there that people are willing to give to you.

You establish a technique on how to develop characters. Everyone does it their own way, and that's what makes it fun.

'Seize the Story' takes readers all the way through the process of writing fiction, from beginning to end. Every element, from dialogue to setting, plotting to character creation, is laid out and illustrated with examples. But the tone of the book is not that of a dry writing manual - it's definitely written for teenagers.

If I just sit here, what am I going to do? I don't have a trade. I don't teach or anything. I just love to make up characters and gradually build a story around them.

It's always hard for a writer to make herself into a character; I had to figure out what my defining characteristics were, and that's something I had to work through multiple drafts to figure out.

I'm very driven by writing. Coming from 'Saturday Night Live,' because it's such a writing job, and we all write our parts on the show and create characters, I'm so respectful of good writing.

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.

I admit I do develop characters from little parts of things I've seen others do.

I could make up characters till the cows came home. Plot's what hard. Very hard.

I was attempting to write the story of my life. It wasn't so much about plot. It was much more about character.

Sometimes I'll ask the book writer to write a monologue, not to be performed, just as if they were notes for the character.

All a writer's characters are imaginary, no matter whether they are based on real people or not. They are people as one imagines them to be.

No author can create a character out of nothing. He must have a model to give him a starting point; but then his imagination goes to work, he builds him up, adding a trait here, a trait there, which his model did not possess.