Dan Fogelman Quotes

Naturally, I mine my girlfriends' lives for good anecdotes and stories - so many of their experiences find their way into my books.

I don't believe you just create a character out of thin air, there's always something of yourself you bring.

When you start writing the magic comes when the characters seem to take on a life of their own and write the words for themselves.

But it's hard for me to pinpoint where all my characters and dialogue come from - imagination or real life. My memoir, of course, was all about my past, and many of the short stories cleave very closely to my life, but the more stories I wrote in the collection, the more that seemed to be invented, but who knows... I think I'm writing about a young woman with acne who shoplifts, but I'm really writing about myself.

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.

The way I like to work is to attach personal experiences to what I'm doing, so it helps tremendously if I can write my own play under what the writer has written.

I started writing morning pages just to keep my hand in, you know, just because I was a writer and I didn't know what else to do but write. And then one day as I was writing, a character came sort of strolling in and I realized, Oh my God, I don't have to be just a screenwriter. I can write novels.

I never dreamed that the little ditties I wrote about annoying customers or bagel recipes would turn into a full-length musical comedy. But a very wise person told me to 'write what you know'. So I did.

I wrote 'Marvels,' which was about a guy who had two daughters, and I wrote 'Astro City Volume 2 #1,' which was about a guy who had two daughters. In both cases, about a year and a half or two years apart. And then after that, I had two daughters, about a year and a half or two years apart.

I love making characters real and believable, through my own experience and choices.

Something about your life always makes its way into your stories. That's just the nature of the beast.

In the books I have written, I have created in my mind a universe. My kids say I have a village in my head and I live in that village, and it's true. When I start writing a book, characters from previous books reappear. All my emotions, my mind, my heart, my dreams, everything becomes connected with a new book, and nothing else really matters.

My most successful books, the ones that I feel the strongest about, are the ones that started with a premise that for me was deeply emotional.

I always like to write where I'm at in real life into whatever I'm working on.

The deal is such that when I begin writing something, I open a door, and those characters come in, and then they won't leave, and so I live with them every day, all day. They are there with me when I'm driving my kids to school, when I'm standing in line at the grocery store.

I always tell people, I never get writer's block because it's coming straight from my brain, like, real-life experiences. I'm like the news. I'm just reporting it for myself.

I think it's easier for me to write from experience.

I can't tell a story just by deciding to tell a story, do it in a didactic way. I need to have my own emotion, to feel, 'Wow, there is something I can discover, I can create.'

When Roseanne read the first script of mine that got into her hands without being edited by someone else she said, 'How can you write a middle-aged woman this well?' I said, 'If you met my mom you wouldn't ask'.

The thing that inspires me most is reading and just observing the people around me. I think those are the two things that make me want to write.

It's easier to write about heartbreak after you've had your heart broken. You have more material to draw from, you can extrapolate from your own experiences and make reasonable assumptions about how your characters would feel and act.

Music’s the soundtrack of my life and has been since I was a teenager. There’s always music. If I’m not playing it, I’m listening to it. With my writing... sometimes it inspires a story, sometimes it highlights something I’m working on, sometimes it simply helps me stay in the narrative mood.

I'm not sure that I have a favorite either on-screen or in the books! Whenever I'm writing, I'm always really excited to dive back into each character.

I'm not a writer. I marvel at writing. I am sometimes absolutely astounded when I read something and I think how in the world did that man or that woman sit down at a typewriter, a computer or a pen and an ink well, and seemingly have nothing come between their heart and that pen.

You can't write if you can't relate.