Become emotionally involved. If you don’t care about your characters, your readers won’t either.
– Judy Blume
Tag: characters
Quotable 463
The art of fiction is freedom of will for your characters.
– Cynthia Ozick
Quotable 375
I write to give myself strength. I write to be the characters that I am not. I write to explore all the things I’m afraid of.
– Joss Whedon
Quotable 327
Treat all your secondary characters like they think the book’s about them.
– Jocelyn Hughes
Quotable 296
Remember: Plot is no more than footprints left in the snow after your characters have run by on their way to incredible destinations. Plot is observed after the fact rather than before. It cannot precede action. It is the chart that remains when an action is through. That is all Plot ever should be. It is human desire let run, running, and reaching a goal. It cannot be mechanical. It can only be dynamic.
– Ray Bradbury
Quotable 266
As insane and stupid and sociopathic as the characters acted, it was always important that their motivations be understandable.
– Josh Lieb, producer, NewsRadio
Quotable 261
One of the surest ways to establish dramatic tension is to have characters in bad situations who are trying intelligently to solve their problems, failing, and falling into worse situations.
– Cory Doctorow
Quotable 227
I don’t base characters on anyone. I make them up, otherwise I’d be thinking about that person and not the character.
– Nora Roberts
Quotable 195
That trite little whimsy about characters getting out of hand; it is as old as the quills. My characters are galley slaves.
– Vladimir Nabokov
Quotable 177
Above all, give us characters we will carry with us after meeting them. Give us people we will remember as if they were real.
– Silas House