Gail Simone Quotes

I try to construct each of my novels around one central theme - core tensions shared by the characters.

I don't know quite how a story develops in my head. It is a bit chaotic. If I am working on a series, one of the main characters at least is already in existence as well as some setting and minor characters. Finding the other main character can be a challenge. Sometimes this character already exists in a minor role in another book.

I feel like having details from their day and having a plot and action and things to do is much more revealing than having a character sitting and thinking to themselves. When I'm writing, I want people to actually have a goal, something that's dragging them forward.

I don't start with the characters. I start with the series of events that will provide the conflict and how it can be resolved. Characters are incidental.

I'm not really a plot writer - I'm more interested in the characters and sort of small events that propel the story forward.

In a novel, it's hard to keep track of everybody.

I don't make unconventional stories; I don't make non-linear stories. I like linear storytelling a lot.

Actually, I find it great fun to develop family series with lots of characters.

All fiction is about people, unless it's about rabbits pretending to be people. It's all essentially characters in action, which means characters moving through time and changes taking place, and that's what we call 'the plot'.

I like taking a character at the most intense moments of their lives and exploring all that in full and then moving on.

On a book like 'X-Men,' you have to stay true to the established fiction, working with editors to ensure continuity, sometimes across multiple titles.

When you're writing a book, with people in it as opposed to animals, it is no good having people who are ordinary, because they are not going to interest your readers at all. Every writer in the world has to use the characters that have something interesting about them, and this is even more true in children's books.

One of those things that I like about TV is that if you get a group of people you like, you can work with these people for months at a time, and you can discover their strengths and weaknesses, and you can use those in the direction where you take the characters.

'Homeland' really is one of those shows where they start to write more or less depending on what's kind of going on in a relationship between characters.

In the writers' room, when we talk about each episode, we first talk about the character journey of the episode.

I usually start with an ending, then outline high points of things that happen, and kind of make up the rest as I go along. Occasionally, the characters surprise me, and I wonder how we got here. Other times, the characters are stubborn and won't do something I want them to in the story.

I keep an elaborate calendar for my characters detailing on which dates everything happens. I'm constantly revising this as I go along. It gives me the freedom to intricately plot my story, knowing it will at least hold up on a timeline.

But I also wanted to give them an intelligent emotional journey, without having to suspend reality - to be able to look at those characters and see reasons for the relationships and why what happens happens.

For me as a storyteller, I want to follow the characters and the story through what they organically demand.

It's really about, oh come on, this guy wouldn't say that or he wouldn't do that, you know, it's about the characters, about the story, about the situation.

Once a novel gets going and I know it is viable, I don't then worry about plot or themes. These things will come in almost automatically because the characters are now pulling the story.

I have things planned for every character like what they're doing down the road and coming to different realizations but I don't have how they overlap.

I do feel more towards certain characters who have depth and intelligence.

I'm tired of playing freaking cha-chas, the sassy CIA agent, the best friend homegirl. I'm tired of that!

A lot of times I'll make films that are mostly character-driven films - stories that involve people. Like, I make the joke: I like to make movies about human beings that live on Earth.