Quotes About Characterization

Let the characters into your mind and heart; suspend your disbelief, if such it is, about the events. Do not disapprove of something a character does before you understand why he does it—if then. Try as hard as you can to live in his world, not in yours; there, the things he does may be quite understandable. And do not judge the world as a whole until you are sure that you have "lived" in it to the extent of your ability.

I often draw from people in my own experience to base a character on, going back to my days with Mike Leigh.

Apparently, it won't do just to tell the reader what a particular character is like. The author needs to show their habits or their words and let the reader form an image on their own.

This is the process embodied in tragedy, where the agent's action involves a corresponding passion, and from the sufferance of the passion there arises an understanding of the act, an understanding that transcends the act. The act, in being an assertion, has called forth a counter-assertion in the elements that compose its context. And when the agent is enabled to see in terms of this counter-assertion, he has transcended the state that characterized him at the start.

Fiona, this is my mate, Frank Begbie. Or Franco. Or Beggars. Or the Beggar Boy. Or the Generalissmo. Or Psychotic Bullying Prick.

In all my characters, I try to find an iota of myself, and in Castle, I found a lot. He gets away with a lot, so that's fun.

Turns out typecasting is a real thing.

Think 'Game of Thrones.' In the old days, this sort of show might be considered bad writing. It doesn't really seem to be moving toward a crisis or climax, it has no true protagonist, and it's structured less like a TV show or a movie than a soap opera.

I don't worry about how folks want to characterize me.

No one likes to be typecast or stereotyped, especially actors. But who would know Esther Williams without a swimming pool, Bela Lugosi without a cape, or Elvis Presley without his guitar. Would we even care?

I have often been characterized by one sound bite, and people say, 'That is the whole of Mike Huckabee, because we have him on this off-the-cuff moment.'

The only way I know how to do something, as cheesy as it sounds, is to become that character, and it affects me in a not so healthy way.

There are certainly times when my own everyday life seems to retreat so the life of the story can take me over. That is why a writer often needs space and time, so that he or she can abandon ordinary life and 'live' with the characters.

What species is he?" "British

I've been called many things. But I suppose 'the devil' is as good a name as any.

Two hallmarks of Homo Sapiens are decoration and self-identification.

Obara, rusted nails and boiled leather, with her angry, close-set eyes and rat-brown hair. Nymeria, languid, elegant, olive-skinned, her long black braid bound up in red-gold wire. Tyene, blue-eyed and blond, a child-woman with her soft hands and little giggles

I would like to carve my novel in a piece of wood. My characters—I would like to have them heavier, more three-dimensional ... My characters have a profession, have characteristics; you know their age, their family situation, and everything. But I try to make each one of those characters heavy, like a statue, and to be the brother of everybody in the world.

For any actor, when you're playing twin brothers, you have to be able to find the similarities between them as well as creating a difference between the two characters. If they just looked the same, what would the point of that be?

There have to be moments when you glimpse something decent, something life-affirming even in the most twisted character. That's where the real art lies. See, I always suspect characters who are painted as lovely, decent human beings. I would always question where the darkness lies.

I think, in a comedy, it's easy to play people as very two-dimensional. But what is enjoyable to watch is seeing a more fully rounded person.

It's a good thing to be typecast, isn't it?

In my early writing, all of my characters were exactly the same person. They all spoke the same, made the same types of jokes, reacted the same, etc. I think they were all just me in disguise.

I find that the only way to make my characters really interesting to children is to exaggerate all their good or bad qualities, and so if a person is nasty or bad or cruel, you make them very nasty, very bad, very cruel. If they are ugly, you make them extremely ugly. That, I think, is fun and makes an impact.