When I wrote my first story, all the characters were teenagers because I think 16, 17 is a great age.
I know some things when I start. I know, let's say, that the play is going to be a 1970s or a 1930s play, and it's going to be about a piano, but that's it. I slowly discover who the characters are as I go along.
Most of Ayn Rand's major characters are already formed at the start of the stories.
I want people to feel conflicted. I want them to feel for characters they started out hating. I want to start conversations about what it means to be a parent. About the responsibility we bear to ourselves and to each other.
My remembrance of the past is a novel I am constantly recomposing; and it would not be a historical novel, but sheer fiction, if the material events which mark and ballast my career had not their public dates and characters scientifically discoverable.
The town is as full as ever of 'characters,' all created by each other.
It's always fun to play characters that are different from me.
An author's characters do what he wants them to do.
Larger-than-life characters make up about. 01 percent of the world's population.
I think everybody came into it with the understanding that they would go through an experience that is literally not by the book, that is not executing the script and then going home, but living and breathing these characters and being in the moment with each other, and improvising and creating a lot of present-tense intensity between characters.
The more I know about America, the better I'll be at performing American characters and American stories.
I have quite a normal family and I'm bored with how normal my family is. I want to mess stuff up a bit. I chose the messed up characters because I find that that's acting. I want to explore emotions that you otherwise wouldn't be able to explore.
The World's a Printing-House, our words, our thoughts, Our deeds, are characters of several sizes. Each soul is a Compos'tor, of whose faults The Levites are Correctors; Heaven Revises. Death is the common Press, from whence being driven, We're gather'd, Sheet by Sheet, and bound for Heaven.
I want people to see the beauty of that condition through the eyes of the characters. In doing that, they can allow people who have the condition to be more accepting of it, and to be open about it. That would be a contribution to the people who have it, and considering that 38% of the Pulitzer Prize winning poets are Bipolar, to think about how much these individuals have contributed to the human spirit.
Sometimes I eavesdrop on people. I could rationalize it - oh, this is good anthropological research for characters I'm writing - but it's basically just nosiness. It also helps me gauge where I'm at: Am I normal?
When I'm writing, I don't put faces on the characters. When I finish the first draft of the script, I start visualizing, and sometimes then I think about one actor.
First person allows deeper insight into the protagonist's character. It allows the reader to identify more fully with the protagonist and to share her world quite intimately. So it suits a story focused on one character's personal journey. However, first person shuts out insights into other characters.
I don't think anybody deals well with tragedy or grief, but maybe my characters are particularly bad at it. Which is why I love them.
Emotions serve characters' purposes. That is their motivation.
The best shows are always the ones that are very, very low-concept and just about great characters.