Lisa Gardner Quotes

I always start with characters rather than with a plot, which many critics would say is very obvious from the lack of plot in my films - although I think they do have plots - but the plot is not of primary importance to me, the characters are.

Even in horror novels where you know most characters aren't going to make it to the end, it's crucial to have fully fleshed-out characters. If you don't do that, the reader doesn't care what happens to them.

I definitely feel that plot flows from character. I don't believe that you can construct a plot and insert people into it.

I'm always sorry to finish a book, to let go of characters I love, people I've struggled to understand for years, people who evolve before me.

Well, for people who want to write best sellers, the best advice I can give is to say that the novel has to engage the reader emotionally.

I am a firm believer that a good plot makes for a fun enough read, but it's not what binds us. If we don't care about the characters, we won't care - not in a lasting way - about what's happening to them.

The story is always in service to the characters, and is only as long or short, or neat or ragged as it needs to be.

Besides the mistakes that are pointed out, I love the way readers become involved with the characters. When readers start asking about character motivations instead of concentrating on the special effects, it means you're connecting with them on a personal level.

Remember, if you don't feel passionate about the characters and subject of your story, your readers won't either.

If you don't have people that the reader cares about and stories that are gripping, you've got nothing.

If you have great characters, then your reader becomes emotionally invested in those people.

I never outline my novels before I write. I do have a vague sense of beginning, middle, and end at the outset of each book, but for me, writing has always been a very character-driven process.

Audiences are just like us as writers - we grow attached to characters. In certain ways you don't want them to change.

If we get caught up in a story, it's because we've started to care about the characters, and that can only happen if we've moved beneath the surface.

One of the things that separates a good genre movie from a bad genre movie, I always think, ironically, is when you care about the people. The dime a dozen ones are where you don't have any awareness of the character.

I do want to write about Jane Whitefield again, but only when I have a good enough idea - something I've figured out about her that's news and that's worth a reader's time.

I'm a novelist, so I can't write about ideas unless they're attached to people.

You spend so much time writing a character the way I did with Buddy Baker and then Green Arrow that you start to care about them. And you almost think of them as people, you know?

If there is any secret to my success, I think it's that my characters are very real to me. I feel everything they feel, and therefore I think my readers care about them.

As a writer, you have to realize that people want to like the characters, so you have to be careful to keep them involved.

I tend to spend a lot of time building characters that the reader will believe in and sympathize with.

The first thing, when I read the script, is that I need to care about what happens and feel compelled by the story and engaged by the characters. It needs to resonate with me, even if what the characters are going through is not something that I have experienced in my life. I have to feel like it has some sort of meaning to me.

I'm more interested in character than events. I've observed that about myself as a writer. I find events, even the most dramatic sort, not to be such fertile ground.

I care about all the characters I play, and I get quite defensive about them.

Television lets audiences deeply connect with characters.