Gail Honeyman Quotes

What makes characters real are details, and if you're crafting a person from scratch, you're probably not going to pay as much attention to a question like, 'Does this person bite their nails?'

What I'm really trying to do is create unique characters.

For every book that I write... I develop a history for each person and make sure they are well rounded and flawed. You have to know everything about them from their shoe size, to where they went to school, to what their first pet was, to what they like to eat, to what they want out of life.

I wanted more in depth ideas about the character and it never came.

I'm about my characters.

I mean, can I really create a full, three-dimensional character? I don't know anymore. I'm certainly going to try.

The thing with videogame characters is that they tend to be really undercooked, and people don't take the time to really flesh them out. They don't treat them with the respect that a writer writing characters in any other medium would treat their character.

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.

Never argue with your characters; they know themselves better than you do.

I tend to come up with people more than situations - most of my books start with a character.

What helps writers, and ultimately, obviously, helps the actors - who should serve the words that the writer puts on the page - is if the character has damages, because then the writers can cultivate and excavate, like a dentist going into a tooth.

Any author of fiction will tell you that characters don't need to be told what to do.

I've got to write about my character every day. I've got to find out where he lives, what bus he catches to school, and stuff like that. You've got to know every little thing about him so when you do it, it feels natural.

I like to take a character and develop it.

I have a cheat-sheet for each one of my characters about their personality, the way they look, etc. So there is no possible way that I could have writer's block.

Developing characters is a strange thing. In the beginning they are abstract and I wonder how to move on from there.

Everyone likes a bit of variety. I'm sure none of my readers only want to read about anti-heroes or villainous protagonists any more than they only want to read about square-jawed heroes doing the right thing. I just write characters than entertain me and hope they'll be ones that other people want to read about, too.

I always look for interesting, complex characters. You know, interesting, well-written material.

Often the starting point for characters, for me, is finding a little, most minor detail, and I'll go from there.

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.

I create my own backstory regardless of if I'm told something about the background or not. There's always more that you can develop in your head that makes a character more layered, more honest.

When you create a character, you create it for yourself - you do whatever you want. It's your job to explore it in as many different avenues as you can in order to make it a fully wounded character.

Scripts that make characters a two-sentence description, I'm not interested in.

Stories are important, but I'm really into characters, and if you can give birth to a good one, that's true success.

I think my best quality as a writer is the ability to craft complicated, nuanced, interesting characters.