Stewart O'Nan Quotes

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

I'm here to get the story on to the page. It would be good to catch your attention, and I have to make you want to read on, and I suppose I prefer you don't actually think about the 'how' at all - the writing technique, the 'style', or even who it is that's putting this together.

Well see, I'm a good enough writer that not everybody in my books talks exactly like I do.

Your source material is the people you know, not those you don't know, but every character is an extension of the author's own personality.

I've written short stories from male perspectives before, and I've never had a problem with it as long as I've understood the character's emotions and motivations.

In my early writing, all of my characters were exactly the same person. They all spoke the same, made the same types of jokes, reacted the same, etc. I think they were all just me in disguise.

I'm always telling my students, don't - don't worry so much third person, first person. It doesn't make that much difference.

It's often wrong to write for specific actors because one ends up using what is least interesting about them, their mannerisms and habits. I prefer not to write for specific people.

That's the way I will write characters, put a fair amount of myself in them, and then everyone else who was like that person, I will pick and choose.

I'm much more comfortable speaking through my characters' voices than my own.

The more gifted and talkative one's characters are, the greater the chances of their resembling the author in tone or tint of mind.

I think striking the right tone for your story is, if you like, the alchemical work of writing.

I put a lot of myself into my characters when I write.

All my characters have got a big slice of me in them. A big piece of me, because it's my dialogue and this is the way I think and talk.

I think of it as the lasagna approach to writing because I'm always adding layers. I'll sometimes do it layer by layer, with dialogue, attribution, action, objects in the scene, setting... It can be sometimes that delineated.

I tend to write one character at a time. But I don't write the entirety of one character at a time.

I write about characters that interest me. And I don't think of my books as being forms of entertainment.

Usually, when I write a novel, it takes me about 100 pages to figure out the voice of the narrator.

I need a distance to my characters when I write.

I'm never writing as a character.

As I write, I try to be the character.

I can't write unless I've got the voice for a character.

When I write, I try to become different characters.

I think as an author every character ends up low-key being some kind of self-insert.

When you write for a show that's not yours, your job is to hear the voices of the characters and write as best you can for those voices.