Simon Pegg Quotes

It's your job to come up with compelling characters who speak to an individual authenticity. If I'm not interested in the characters, I can't go on. I have to be fascinated by them.

The trick is to try and justify every word on the page and make sure my character is the man who would say that.

Sometimes as writers, we try and put narrative development above character development. We try to move our characters around like chess pieces that do our bidding. The problem with that is sometimes the characters do things they shouldn't do. Things that are inorganic.

I want to tell authentic, real stories with real characters.

For me, the dialogue is the easiest part of writing. It just always seems so obvious what a character will say. Maybe it's because I talk too much!

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?'

I find it an easy way into writing pieces is to think what the character's voice is like, and start from there.

My first job is to write the characters as full and authentic people as well as I can.

It's very, very important to me, no matter who the person is, to play that person with the utmost degree of truth that I'm able to bring. But playing a character like Jack Sparrow or Willy Wonka, that requires nothing but a degree of responsibility to the intent of the story - responsibility to the film-maker to deliver the goods.

Sympathetic characters usually have a voice. They usually don't have any trouble being heard.

I think the main thing to remember when writing a novel is to stay true to the characters.

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

I do not choose characters because I think, 'Wow, that woman is so strong.' I chose these characters with utmost conviction because I think they were realistic enough to exist, and I really liked the scripts.

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.

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

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.

To make a book convincing, it's less important that the right tree be in the right place than that the characters are emotionally real.

I can tell you that as a writer and as a reader, I regard character as king. Or queen. No matter how riveting the action or interesting the plot twists, if I don't feel like I'm meeting someone who feels real, I'm not going to be compelled to read further.

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 always try to write about believable people.

Normally you read a screenplay - and I read a lot of them - and the characters don't feel like people. They feel like plot devices or cliches or stereotypes.

It was important for me early on to find the voice of each character and figure out what was unique about them and their individual worldview that I could use for comedy or conflict.

Any character that can't be kept straight, to me, isn't a character who should be in the book - you know, anyone not vivid enough to have a claim on my attention.

I think the best way to sell a made-up character is to plant his feet into the real earth.

You can't make the audience fall in love with a character you don't like.