Karen Traviss Quotes

I love the creating part of taking on a character. It is fun to be another person and create what it would be like to be that person.

I find it easier to play someone who is so far from me because you create someone - you build this person based on the story and the script, with the director.

A part of my job, when I'm playing a character and approaching a role, is to rationalize and to not judge whatsoever.

I don't want to draw from my own experiences in life. I first like to become the character and then think from her point of view.

I think the two main tools actors have are the imagination of what other people have gone through, to connect with and through research, and there's one's own experience.

I think in a lot of ways, writing, when you're really in there, is like being an actress because you're in somebody else's head.

In all my characters, I try to find an iota of myself, and in Castle, I found a lot. He gets away with a lot, so that's fun.

That's why I enjoy acting: getting in the mind of someone else.

When you have a script, and you're discussing what it can be, and who going to play what role, that's a kind of like a fantasy football game. You can imagine these different dream teams interpreting these characters that only exist in your head.

I like to build a character, trying to stretch my imagination as far to the walls of my brain as I can to come up with something that feels truthful and feels real - as close to the skin as I can get it.

When I'm writing a song, I try to be the character.

I love creating characters and becoming someone else entirely.

One of the things about writing fiction is that you create people that you feel, more or less, as though you know.

Usually when you're doing concepts for a character, you just try a couple different things to see what sticks.

You use your emotions to try and find them in the character that you're playing.

What I loved about the acting class was that you got to think all day long about a person that wasn't you, and figure out why they were sad and what they wanted, what they dreamed.

You can't judge a character that you're playing, because then you're fighting against doing what the character's doing.

I work out the other bits, too, but I need to know what I look like, very early on. And then it's like a template; I'll fill that person out. If I get that out of the way, then I'm all right.

I don't want to spoil the magic, but it's a very curious thing that honestly baffles me. It's the nearest we'll ever get to playing God, to suddenly produce these fully formed creatures. It is a bit odd. Other aspects you work out more - you rework sentences, you rework imagery. But not characters.

To play a character is to inhabit the world and the life of that character.

The most important basis of any novel is wanting to be someone else, and this means creating a character.

I take stuff from real life and try to make a character out of it. And I try to live the world of the characters a little bit.

Writing is like a rollercoaster ride for me, an adventure. I love exploring the world through 'playing' people who are absolutely nothing like me.

I think any role you need to play not so much transforms but I like to think of it as understanding the psychology of another character.

One of my favorite parts of being an actress is being a detective.