It's true that it's a solitary occupation, but you would be surprised at how much companionship a group of imaginary characters can offer once you get to know them.
When I write songs, I try to remove myself a little bit. Obviously, they're very personal to me, but it feels easier if I feel like I'm writing characters.
As a writer of fiction, I spend my days inventing real lives for make-believe people; what I create can only seem real.
But what I did think would be interesting is if we created a fictitious story of our own, and then took these stories that we had collected and assigned them to characters who would be played by actors.
I see Santa Claus and Joseph Smith and Luke Skywalker as the same person.
I am thrilled to write 'The Treasure Chest,' and to bring to life not only the childhoods of famous people from history, but also the characters of Maisie and Felix, who I hope you will fall in love with just as I have!
You're on your own with the book. And while you are writing fiction, you're spending all this time with people who don't actually exist, which is just madness.
All a writer's characters are imaginary, no matter whether they are based on real people or not. They are people as one imagines them to be.
There are a lot of characters that you can get into that don't exist in the studio world.
You read about somebody, and it doesn't really matter whether or not they really exist - the point is that you get into them like real characters.
Fiction has consisted either of placing imaginary characters in a true story, which is the Iliad, or of presenting the story of an individual as having a general historical value, which is the Odyssey.
My characters are fictional. I get ideas from real people, sometimes, but my characters always exist only in my head.
The novel is a meditation on existence as seen through the medium of imaginary characters.
I like to create imaginary characters and events around a real historical situation. I want readers to feel: OK, this probably didn't happen, but it might have.
I'm usually working on my own mythology, my own realm of created characters. Stories in mythology inspire me, though I may not be conscious of it.
Personally, I read fiction, in part, because I get to spend time with people who aren't my people.
Somebody said they threw their copy of Dungeons and Dragons into the fire, and it screamed. It's a game! The magic spells in it are as real as the gold. Try retiring on that stuff.
This is a work of fiction. All the characters in it, human and otherwise, are imaginary, excepting only certain of the fairy folk, whom it might be unwise to offend by casting doubts on their existence. Or lack thereof.
I understand that fictional men aren't real. Not 'really real'. I know this the same way I wonder if my readers are disappointed when they meet me.
Eleanor Oliphant isn't me or anyone I know. Of course I've felt loneliness - everybody does - but Eleanor and her experiences are fictional.
Writing can make you feel a bit psychotic. You create a world, and you're sitting inside it all day long, talking to people who are not really there.
Pixar films are not realistic. They are believable for the worlds we are creating.
I've waited for a novel from Charles Yu with eager anticipation since being bowled over by his 2006 short story collection, 'Third Class Superhero.'
The best part of the fiction in many novels is the notice that the characters are purely imaginary.
They are imaginary characters. But perhaps not solely the products of my imagination, since there are some aspects of the characters that relate to my own experience of a wide variety of people.
