Stories start in all sorts of places. Where they begin often tells the reader of what to expect as they progress. Castles often lead to dragons, country estates to deeds of deepest love (or of hate), and ambiguously presented settings usually lead to...
. . .and every native has a story of winter – stories that usually begin, You call this a storm? And grow in the telling like battle tales shared by graying war veterans. It’s a peculiar character flaw to those of us from cold climates that we fe...
There are few people whom I really love, and still fewer of whom I think well. The more I see of the world, the more am I dissatisfied with it; and every day confirms my belief of the inconsistency of all human characters, and of the little dependenc...
Yeah, sure,” I scoffed. “You’re the picture of respectability and moral character…You expect me to believe you were your parents’ worst nightmare? What was your criminal act of choice—drunken bar fights? Or maybe grand theft auto? Don’t...
I run through all the positive character qualities in my mind, and assign myself a number from 1-10 on where I think I am on each. Surprisingly I score tens on each one until the last one, confidence, where I score myself a one.
Do you know the feeling when you start reading a new book before the membrane of the last one has had time to close behind you? You leave the previous book with ideas and themes–characters even–caught in the fibers of your clothes, and when you o...
As I have pointed out before, characters are not born like people, of woman; they are born of a situation, a sentence, a metaphor containing in a nutshell a basic human possibility that the author thinks no one else has discovered or said something e...
The inimitable stories of Tong-King never have any real ending, and this one, being in his most elevated style, has even less end than most of them. But the whole narrative is permeated with the odour of joss-sticks and honourable high-mindedness, an...
Careful not to blur the lines between what belongs to characters, and what does not belong to you. Even 'reality tv' is scripted. Don't get it twisted. ~T.F. Hodge
...each reader creates his own film inside his head, gives faces to the characters, constructs every scene, hears the voices, smells the smells. ...whenever a reader goes to see a film based on a novel that he likes, he leaves a feeling disappointed,...
Yuki: "What can I learn from a stupid cat like you? You didn’t even know that Jason isn’t really a bear. He’s a character in a horror film." Kyo: "Yeah? So what if I didn’t? Like I’d waste my time watching some movie about a bear!" Yuki: Yo...
In the beginning, there was physics. "Physics" describes how matter, energy, space, and time behave and interact with one another. The interplay of these characters in our cosmic drama underlies all biological and chemical phenomena. Hence everything...
In Washington Square, one could still feel the characters of Henry James and the presence of the author himself. Entering the perimeters of the white arch, one was greeted by the sounds of bongos and acoustic guitars, protest singers, political argum...
I write books that I want to read. I write books that feature curvy heroines because I'm a curvy woman myself and it gets tiresome to read books about skinny women all the time. There's nothing wrong with skinny women, I just don't relate to their li...
Some writers, I'm told, look for their characters' surnames in telephone directories. I don't - it seems too obvious. Or too deliberate: if you go looking for names, you're bound to find them, of course, but I've always had a superstitious hunch that...
All to often we waste time rebuking spirits in our lives confusing them with character flaws, and then wonder why we still deal with these issues of pride, vanity,ego and plain negative attitudes; Also as we seem to notice these flaws in others, chan...
Stay alert! Don’t let someone’s words blind you from their behavior... They can say all the right things, they can make you feel things you've never felt before, but don't be fooled; their actions will reveal their true character, desires, and pr...
When you do anything creative, you really have to live entirely in that world. I think my ability to do that is what makes me such a bad dinner guest. I'm always looking over someone's shoulder, taking in stuff around the room, immersed in the world ...
I have minor characters who are Asian-American, and I've been using them throughout my career, but they've never taken center stage, they've never been really powerful, they've never expressed some of the experiences I had growing up in the U.S. John...
I actually did an Agatha Christie monologue for my audition showcase at Guildhall, and that's how I got my agent. Some people said 'ooh it's old hat' and 'too risky'. Some people think she's all about the narrative and thriller aspect at the expense ...
