Writing fiction is one of the greatest forms of empathy. It's not enough to simply write from the perspective of your characters...you have to feel what they feel.
When someone pitches a joke for a character that is just perfect, and you can imagine that actor reading that line at your table read or on the set, it's like the sound of a snap snapping into place.
It was nice, though, to have the long term benefit to be able to pare away those things and eventually make the character my own and put my own unique stamp.
I like characters with problems. I like to understand them... To play alcoholics, fetishists, strange girls, you have to dig deep within yourself. It's 'elsewhere' that interests me.
People are like, 'What's Game of Thrones about?' I'm like, 'It's in the title.' For real, this is a game for the Iron Throne. No matter what character you are, you're sucked into that at some point.
What I find frustrating about scripted television is that it's rare that you are surprised by how you feel about the character, or how you feel about the show.
Alice Munro is a particular kind of short story writer in that she writes long, character-driven short stories.
There are so many examples of talented actors working today, no matter how they live their private lives. I'm lucky that people believe me when I'm in character.
If you keep the situations real, the characters' behavior will be real and honest, too. If they're suddenly robbing a bank and exchanging snappy dialogue, well, I wouldn't even know how to write that.
I don't like to think that maybe I'm just getting old. I'm not too excited about watching a huge explosion. I'm more interested in people and characters.
I felt like I'd culturally arrived when a character on the HBO show 'True Blood' was reading a hardback of 'Heartsick' at Sookie's kitchen table.
I've always been incredibly crazy about the fact that I'd have any fans at all. It says to me that the characters that I choose are interesting to people and that's thrilling to me. It really is.
I am tired of our characters being so incomplete. When do we ever save the day in a film? When does a Latino actor get to be the hero?
It can certainly happen that characters in more sophisticated stories can 'take over' as they develop and change the author's original ideas. Well, it certainly happens to me at times.
I like people to be surprised by the turn of events. I don't want things just to be pat and formulaic. If there's some sort of internal combustion in the character or a desire to change the way things are going, that makes for conflict, which is the ...
I think theatre is by far the most rewarding experience for an actor. You get 4 weeks to rehearse your character and then at 7:30 pm you start acting and nobody stops you, acting with your entire soul.
All observers not laboring under hallucinations of the senses are agreed, or can be made to agree, about facts of sensible experience, through evidence toward which the intellect is merely passive, and over which the individual will and character hav...
I feel like my experience on 'Community' was that I saw just how important that first year is for a series. That is where you work all the pieces out, and that means honing the characters' voices, setting that tone, finding your angle.
It's one of the most liberating things I experience in writing - letting yourself get rid of a gesture or character or plot point that always nagged, even if you couldn't admit to yourself that it did.
With indies, all they have is their script and it's very important to them. The characters are better drawn, the stories more precise and the experience greater than with studio films where sometimes they fill in the script as they're shooting.
Adult characters are all the things they've encountered over time. But kids haven't accumulated all the life experience, all the regrets. They tend to be more in the moment, more willing to play, to be joyful.
