As a writer, every time I create a character, I try to go for something to captivate the audience in some way. It's also an extension of how the audience would like to see themselves.
It's very hard to connect with a character when you haven't gotten a sense of who they are.
You're doing it to make the character as specific as possible, so that it's a specific individual that you're talking about, not that whole class of people.
When you build characters from the outside in, they become, oftentimes they become like 'Saturday Night Live' characters or they become like caricatures of the character.
When I'm writing a woman character, I don't think, 'What would a woman do?' I just think, 'What would this character do in this situation?'
I try not to identify too strongly with any of my characters. I like to stand back and see them objectively. I think this is why I often use boys instead of girls, just in case I get too close and lose the overall picture.
I like to write characters that feel like people that I would know.
There's a bizarre insistence on how a story should be. 'The protagonist must be sympathetic!' they say. Whatever that means. I never engage in that discussion. I never use that word, 'sympathetic.' I just know 'interesting.'
One of the things about writing fiction is that you create people that you feel, more or less, as though you know.
Early on in the writing, there is often a sentence that pins down a character for me.
Characters are not created on paper or laptop alone.
You need the audience to become invested in the characters and in order to become invested, they need to identify with the characters... and that's why the characters need to be real.
When you're writing fiction, you're in every character 'cause you can't help it.
One of the ways I think I gain fodder for characters is by watching people.
Sometimes a character is really based on research that you do. Other times it's just based on your imagination or perhaps your conversation with the director. Or sometimes all of the above. It depends on the movie and character.
My characters live inside my head for a long time before I actually start a book about them. Then, they become so real to me I talk about them at the dinner table as if they are real. Some people consider this weird. But my family understands.
You need to know the characters as living, breathing people before you start the plot; otherwise, you'll feel panic, anarchy and chaos.
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.
People always want to identify a writer with their protagonist.
When you create a show, and create characters, these people are like children to you.
One has to be able to twist and change and distort characters, play with them like clay, so everything fits together. Real people don't permit you to do that.
I suppose it's easier for most writers to create and vivify characters of their own gender.
Knowing that Gene and Morgan were playing those roles made it much easier to put the script together-we knew who we were writing it for. It took some mystery away.
I'm not interested in cutting the feet off my characters or stretching them to make them fit my certain political view.
My characters are based on people I know, but not in a direct way.
