When I tried to play characters that strayed from who I am it ended in disaster. People didn't expect me in comedies or musicals.
Example has more followers than reason. We unconsciously imitate what pleases us, and approximate to the characters we most admire.
My readers have to work with me to create the experience. They have to bring their imaginations to the story. No one sees a book in the same way, no one sees the characters the same way. As a reader you imagine them in your own mind. So, together, as author and reader, we have both created the story.
When I'm creating characters, I definitely think of theme songs. Writing for me is very visual, so I sometimes think of it in terms of a movie with a soundtrack, and try to transfer that to words.
When I take on a character, it's a sacrifice. There's something that you give up every time. I want to become these characters, and I want to be mysterious, but if you know too much about me, it's not going to be too much fun watching me play a character, because it's just going to be me with a mask on, instead of you believing what the mask is.
If you know your characters well enough, you aren't trying to grasp for storylines. You're really thinking about their flaws and their passions and what they're chasing.
There are a set of malicious, prating, prudent gossips, both male and female, who murder characters to kill time; and will rob a young fellow of his good name before he has years to know the value of it.
I always look for good stories and good characters, and if they're placed in a whodunit, then I'm interested.
All my early books are written as if I were Indian. In England, I had started writing as if I were English; now I write as if I were American. You take other peoples backgrounds and characters; Keats called it negative capability.
You have to be able to get inside the heads of the characters and completely sympathize and understand them
Every time I make a movie I have too many characters and too many locations.
I'd like to work with some of the videogame companies for the simple fact that they obviously need some sort of writer's help. I play videogames, and lately it's hard for me to enjoy them because I'm spending all my time cringing at the corny dialogue, thin characters, and glaring plot holes.
I'm a nice middle-class girl in real life, and I'm a mom and a grandma, and I usually play sweet characters.
I think my own personal style always ends up seeping into characters that I play. I've always had a very distinct idea of fashion for myself, and what a character should wear.
I'm more of a clown, a tragic clown. Yeah. I just like humor to come out of characters.
Reading fiction is important. It is a vital means of imagining a life other than our own, which in turn makes us more empathetic beings. Following complex story lines stretches our brains beyond the 140 characters of sound-bite thinking, and staying within the world of a novel gives us the ability to be quiet and alone, two skills that are disappearing faster than the polar icecaps.
I feel like if you aren't honest and if you don't let go and ease up off of the narrator, then the story doesn't take up a life of its own, and the characters can't take up a life of their own. You handicap the story when you try to protect your characters.
It never occurred to me to write anything that didn't include gay characters in it.
The more gifted and talkative one's characters are, the greater the chances of their resembling the author in tone or tint of mind.
As I swim through the summer tide of vulgarity, I find that's what I'm looking for: Movies that at least feel affection for their characters. Raunchy is OK. Cruel is not.