It doesn’t matter if your lead character is good or bad. He just has to be interesting, and he has to be good at what he does.
– David Chase
Tag: character
Quotable 478
Playing around with symbols, even as a critic, can be a kind of kiddish parlor game. A little of it goes a long way. There are other things of greater value in any novel or story … humanity, character analysis, truth on other levels, etc., etc. Good symbolism should be as natural as breathing … and as unobtrusive.
– Ray Bradbury
Quotable 454
If you have several ways you can take a situation, and you pick the one that cheats the characters, the audience, and common sense, you need to pick again.
– Jamahl Epsicokhan
Quotable 428
Part of being a writer is getting yourself quiet enough and out of the way enough that the character can just speak.
– Callie Khouri
Quotable 349
Respect the way characters may change once they’ve got 50 pages of life in them.
– Rose Tremain
Quotable 313
Respect your characters, even the minor ones. In art, as in life, everyone is the hero of their own particular story.
– Sarah Waters
Quotable 312
All I’ve done so far this week is change three characters’ genders and I still don’t know whether their current genitalia are permanent.
– J.K. Rowling
Quotable 298
The human animal varies from class to class, culture to culture. In one way we are consistent: We are irrational. Whenever you create a character you must allow for the existence of irrationality.
– Rita Mae Brown
Quotable 291
When you are rooting for a character to die for being so inexplicably hostile and inept, the writing has failed.
– Jamahl Epsicokhan
Quotable 289
Nothing will get me to shut a book faster than characters who don’t have a developed personality that informs their actions.
– Liz Tampa