Elmore Leonard Quotes

It's usually easier for me to begin writing in a character's voice if that person is different from me in some significant way.

I admit I do develop characters from little parts of things I've seen others do.

A good journalist, as you know, is a great listener. And so's a good writer. And I got to listen to people for almost 20 years. That serves me well, I hope, when I try to understand how a character might be feeling, or how they might react.

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

Something people say about acting is that acting is listening. But I think that writing is listening, too. That you really have to listen to what are they saying and what they're communicating to you. And so, a lot of it is just getting stuff down.

My process is kind of intuitive - I think about how a character will speak according to their station and personality, occasionally making notes with guidelines for their mannerisms, and then I just sort of crack on and write it.

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.

Writers often say that characters begin to write themselves, and I never used to believe that. I always thought that was complete hogwash.

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!

One of the ways I think I gain fodder for characters is by watching people.

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

It isn't as if a writer merely records life as it unfurls. Reality does not automatically transcribe as literature; real people are not shapely, compelling characters to be harvested. Charming facts and sharp observations rarely slide seamlessly into whatever narrative is at hand.

For a writer it's a dream to sit and watch people as close as possible.

As a writer, I always think about who my prototype actors are, in my brain. It's helpful, as a writer, to think about that.

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.

When you create a show, and create characters, these people are like children to you.

I very seldom, very seldom, even know what my characters look like.

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.

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

I think every character I've ever come up with has been based on someone or something I've known.

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.

You know, as a writer, I'm more of a listener than a writer, cuz if I hear something I will write it down.

I steal things from people, characteristics, and I just stock them in my head like a library to use for characters in the future.

I'm the opposite of someone like David Grossman, who knows how his characters walk, and how they smell. I don't allow myself to imagine what mine look like at all. My sense of them comes from the inside. They remain, by necessity, physically vague in my mind.

A lot of times characters are combinations of people I come across in life. I people-watch a lot.