Quotes About Character

I've always been a believer in research. It's great to have an instinctual human reaction to a character, too, of course, but it has to be countered with knowledge and understanding.

On stage, you have the instant reaction. I'm in control of my own destiny up there. If I fail, I can always say, 'I should have read that audience better. I don't know why I went in that direction.' In the commercial world, you're not writing your character.

I love performing on stage the most. It's getting that instant reaction from a live audience. There are no boundaries, you can take your character as far as you want to, you can be the craziest person ever.

We try to not write stories based on reaction. We try to write them based on character integrity as we understand it and observe it.

Why does 'I Love Lucy' still make people laugh? Because she's a specific character who has real reactions.

What I really appreciated about Obama in the last campaign was that he was not reactive, and we're such a reactive culture... It takes a certain strength to be patient and have a plan.

If the reader cares, I don't think it matters so much whether your hero is in fact an anti-hero.

I grew up writing thank-you notes. Real, honest-to-goodness, pen-and-ink, stamped and posted letters. More than simple habit, it's about what the commitment to expressing your thoughts and feelings in writing says about the character of the writer. About the joy such notes bring to the reader.

I tend to spend a lot of time building characters that the reader will believe in and sympathize with.

Empathy is not as complicated when you have some aspects in common with your character; it's not impossible to know someone who's like you in many ways but different in one. This is true especially if you are a reader. Reading makes you accustomed to inhabiting other lives and sensibilities.

The day a character becomes predictable is the day a writer should think about moving on - because the reader certainly will.

Your opening should give the reader a person to focus on. In a short story, this person should turn up almost immediately; he should be integral to the story's main action; he should be an individual, not just a type. In a novel, the main character may take longer to appear: Anna Karenina doesn't show up in her own novel until chapter eighteen.

The fundamentals for me are character and conflict. I put character first because readers will be indifferent to conflict if they are indifferent to the character who is experiencing it.

People who were more concerned with themselves and looking good to their readers then they were with the characters sacrificed a series for the sake of a story.

I put ordinary people in jeopardy and give them the opportunity to be heroic. Then there's a great payoff for the reader at the end, when the heroic character gets what he or she deserves. Readers will come back again and again if they feel satisfied at the end.

I believe that if writers want their readers to care about a character, they have to care themselves. I have to root for a detective who screws up as much as Thorne does, who shares my birthday, my North London stomping ground, and my love of country music, both alt and cheesy.

In fiction, a reaction shot is a brief portrayal of how your character reacts to something that someone else has done. In contrast to more direct character building, your guy doesn't initiate the sequence; he completes it. Exactly how he completes it can tell readers a lot about him.

I loved 'Lobo' in the '90s, but I think that character is hard to connect with, especially for new readers.

When it comes to your hero, what the readers really fall in love with are his flaws. No one ever falls in love with a perfect hero.

I never envisioned when I was reading that comic as a 17-year-old that I would have the opportunity to actually play the character.

As anyone who reads Marvel comics will tell you, it's actually more important that you understand the people that are inside the mask, as opposed to the mask and the cowl or anything else like that.

My criteria has always been the script, director and character. But I also attach importance to the production house. After all, the banner has to go all out to present the film in a grand manner. I am ready to work with any house that is capable of marketing and packaging a film well.

I think the only reason I wanted to do modeling, really, was because I knew I wasn't ready to act; I knew I didn't have enough life experience, and I knew that doing photo shoots was a way of acting. Playing a character each shoot and being able to just emerge yourself in these awkward experiences - it was amazing.

I'm so excited. I love Peeta so much. I think that over the course of the next couple of books, he has so many interesting places to go to, character-wise. I'm ready to dive full-force into it. When I saw the movie actually, it got me energized. 'Let's go get some cameras! Let's go shoot the second one right now!'