Emily Giffin Quotes

I want to have compassion for my characters - I feel like I am the characters when I'm writing them.

What I love about my work is that I'm forced to look through my character's eyes.

As a writer, it's a great narrative tool to have that character who is slightly detached but at the same time observant of his reality, because I think that's pretty much what being a writer is - being there, watching and internalizing.

The great thing about writing is that you always put yourself in the shoes of the character. If you're doing it right, you can see into the heart of all your characters. Usually, when there's a writing problem, it's because you aren't doing that.

I always find stuff in my characters to relate to.

You have to have empathy, knowledge and compassion for your characters if you're a writer.

But I always need to identify with a character to write about him or her - and by 'identify,' I mean see the world through that person's eyes and have a strong sense of the inner logic of their acts and decisions, wacky or wrongheaded though they might be. In that sense, I think there's some of me in all of them.

As authors, most - most authors, our art is portraying the human condition. Trying to show you what it's like to be somebody else, trying to make you feel for somebody else. That means you have to have a high degree of empathy.

There are technical tricks that may help you create more effective characters. My approach to characterization is not at all technical. I can't really analyze how I do it, but I am sure of one thing. To write convincing characters, you must possess the ability to think yourself into someone else's skin.

Part of being a fiction writer is being able to imagine how someone else is thinking and feeling. I think I've always been good at that.

When I write, I try to become different characters.

I do feel like that's what a writer does, is he goes into other people's heads.

The hardest thing is to write about people. First and foremost, you have to encounter their humanity. That is the only way you can make them live as characters on the page.

Novels attempt to render human experience; that's really all they are. They are meant to convey empathy for the character.

I don't have to live the lives of my characters to write about them. It's about really putting yourself in their shoes.

If I don't fall in love with my characters, I cannot shoot.

I don't really distinguish between sympathy and honesty when I'm writing. The two go together - I'm interested in inhabiting my characters, seeing the world through their eyes.

I think all characters are facets of the writer. In a way, they have to be if you're going to write them convincingly.

I really like getting inside the heads of female characters. I think I can do that well, and I enjoy it.

All I can guess is that when I write, I forget that it's not real. I'm living the story, and I think people can read that sincerity about the characters. They are real to me while I'm writing them, and I think that makes them real to the readers as well.

To imagine yourself inside another person... is what a storywriter does in every piece of work; it is his first step, and his last too, I suppose.

Fiction is all about vicarious experiences and getting into other people's heads in a way that no other art form lets you.

Once I started to value and respect my characters, I could really hear them. I just let them start talking.

When I'm writing a book, sentence by sentence, I'm not thinking theoretically. I'm just trying to work out the story from inside the characters I've got.

When I write a book, characters come to life for me somewhere at the back of my head. I strive to make them flesh and blood in an abstract way, in words.