Mary Stuart Masterson Quotes

I have always argued, in a good novel, interesting things happen to interesting people.

You decide which characters you want and then do the best you can to bring their humanity to the forefront in the context that you place them in - the crises in which you've placed them.

Whether you're writing a horror show or a James Bond film, I think what bubbles beneath is interesting characterization. The colors that emerge through storytelling is what a dramatist does. There's always got to be something bubbling underneath that will erupt at some point.

If you know exactly what your character knows, it's a drama.

In order to deliver the emotional truth in the story, you have to include some of the literal truth.

I want to play characters that are interesting to watch.

I don't really approach stories to make them different from other stuff I've seen, I just try to get into the character, into his or her head. Try to make it as funny, as scary or as wild as I can so that I really like it.

I try to ground most of my characters in reality somehow. That's kind of what I bring to the table.

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.

I seem to have to make my characters family before I can access their hearts in any way that matters.

If you give a character room to breathe, they come alive.

When you've got good writing, you can kind of give up all the research, in a way, and start just following the emotional integrity of the journey of your character.

I'm not interested in cutting the feet off my characters or stretching them to make them fit my certain political view.

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.

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.

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

So I work hard to present the human side of my characters while not neglecting the plot.

My job is to allow the character to live and breathe - and become as real to the reader as he or she is to me.

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

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.

I love to evoke the bones and meat and thoughts of characters.

You've either got to find a way to make your continuing characters insteresting without making them maudlin or overwrought, or you've got to put more emphasis on the suspects.

The bottom line always remains the same: What is the basic humanity of the character? How do I make them resonate with the reader?

I love storytelling. I love characters that are complicated and layered, real people, that you see why they do what they do.

Whether it's a very dramatic part or a comical role, I feel I need to create the same thing: a full-fledged, three-dimensional character that the audience can identify with.