Character Writing Quotes: top 100 famous quotes about Character Writing

Character Writing Quotes & Sayings

Happy to read and share the best inspirational Character Writing quotes, sayings and quotations on Wise Famous Quotes.

Characters begin as your children and become your teachers. — Chloe Thurlow

Believe in your character. Animate (or write) with sincerity. — Glen Keane

I wish every American explored the importance of novel writing, identity, honesty, character and place in fresh-ass ways. — Kiese Laymon

Before I write down one word, I have to have the character in my mind through and through. I must penetrate into the last wrinkle of his soul. — Henrik Ibsen

When you're writing first person, all I can see and tell as the author is what that main character can see. — Pearl Cleage

I learned that comedy is born out of strong characters. I won't begin writing a character until I have a clear take on them. — Maria Semple

Any time two characters are talking about a third, the scene is a crock of s***. — David Mamet

There's a kind of acting that goes on in my head when I'm writing a character where I put myself in their place. — Jeffrey Eugenides

It's when you feel worse, that's when your character comes out and the last thing you want to do is quit. — Paul T. Scheuring

I usually end have one outrageous minor character. He or she says the stuff I wish I had said in real life. Readers will love that character. — Dan Alatorre

Writing is lonely. Until that moment you write your first character and suddenly you have company. — Eliza Green

You have to write a song around this specific character or to enhance a specific scene. A lot of other craft goes on. — Mick Jagger

Character development is vital when writing a strong story. Weak characters make for weak stories. — Beem Weeks

I have a very healthy appetite for good writing and good characters. Having weak writing is my biggest fear. — Michael K. Williams

I think that if you just write your characters you end up with something that people can access. — Ayana Mathis

Your character that you create in your writing not only represents who you are, but also represents a number of people who you've met along the way. — Grant Morrison

Being passionate about something is the most beautiful characteristic you can develop. — Charlotte Eriksson

All characters are based on elements of a writer's personal experience. — Robert Holdstock

I've always tried to write the kind of book I most loved to read: character-centered adventure. — Lois McMaster Bujold

You must learn to be three people at once: writer, character, and reader. — Nancy Kress

When I'm writing a woman character, I don't think, 'What would a woman do?' I just think, 'What would this character do in this situation?' — Ken Follett

My characters, I find them as I'm writing. It's quite incredible how fully realized they are in my mind, how many details I know about each of them. — Paul Auster

I thought about writing the character as male, but then I would be forced to portray him as a woman in a man's body. — Christopher Stocking

I really do literally put myself into a character's shoes. — Ruth Rendell

Sometimes you can write about a character's day in under a minute and sometimes it takes a day just to write about a minute. — Jennifer V Clancy

The art of fiction is freedom of will for your characters. — Cynthia Ozick

I write stories about conspiracies and paranoid characters while I am, in fact, a very skeptical person. — Umberto Eco

Characters make their own plot. The dimensions of the characters determine the action of the novel. — Harper Lee

Remember that you don't write a story because you have an idea but because you have a believable character. — Flannery O'Connor

Which of us has not felt that the character we are reading in the printed page is more real than the person standing beside us? — Cornelia Funke

All the characters on the album are inside me, though none are me. They are sides of me or who I was. — David Berman

Audiences will admire your character's strength but connect with them through their weakness. — Don Roff

All the things that live within you find their place, in character and story, once you tap into that other space that is the creative writing space. — Francesca Gregorini

I see pictures in my mind and become the character in the song as I'm writing. It's kind of method songwriting, where you're the actor in the song. — Diane Warren

The characters that I have on Twitter have very little resemblance to me, the person who's writing them. — Michael Ian Black

I find it an easy way into writing pieces is to think what the character's voice is like, and start from there. — Armando Iannucci

Woman's faith and woman's trust, Write the characters in dust. — Walter Scott

I regard writing not as an investigation of character but as an exercise in the use of language, and with this I am obsessed. — Evelyn Waugh

Once you're imagining being the main character, and you're having the conversations and actually being there, the magic in fiction writing takes over. — Will Hobbs

Poe was the first writer to write about main characters who were bad guys or who were mad guys, and those are some of my favorite stories, — Stephen King

Thought for the day: Twitter ... 140 character limit ... must be a great tool for fortune cookie writers ... — E.A. Bucchianeri

The characters write the plot. Their natures do. — Norman Rush

The line of dialogue belongs to the character; the verb is the writer sticking his nose in. — Elmore Leonard

I choose to write characters from the inside because I feel like that's the way I'm gonna get the most honest version of them. — Charlie Kaufman

Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for. — Kurt Vonnegut

Any great character is the combination of a brilliant actor and the right writing. — Brad Falchuk

I guess that in a lot of ways, my writing is more of a character to me than something that I feel personally attached to. — Angel Olsen

Every paragraph should accomplish two goals: advance the story, and develop your characters as complex human beings. — Nancy Kress

I don't think about relatability (when writing), I think about the heart of the character. — Bill Konigsberg

Writing a new film about cereal killers. Not serial killers, cereal killers. The main character can eat two, three boxes at a time. — Dov Davidoff

Since I am never alone with myself. Since I am always watching the character playing my part in the scene, there is no possibility of spontaneity. — Ronan Bennett

I don't always understand my characters. I write to understand them better. — Dacia Maraini

Once you start writing a character visually, you're in trouble. — Melissa McCarthy

You take something from your past that you're somewhat ashamed about and you write about it from another character's point of view. — Jess Walter

Writing is work, but it's also a compulsion, and once you get your characters on paper, you can't abandon them. You have to respond to them. — Rosamunde Pilcher

Create a character with an obsession, then follow. — Ray Bradbury

Places are extremely important when writing a long story because place shapes a character. — Tabitha King

The character's attitude is more important than plot. — Stephen J. Cannell

I love writing every song I can like a little mini movie. I like to have a character, or some characters, and really paint a picture with the song. — Dolly Parton

I write characters that are based on elements of people I know and experiences I've really had. — Aziz Ansari

You're allowed to manipulate the environment, but not the character. — Sean Platt

A child can identify with adult characters- but only if they are sympathetically drawn and simple enough. — Edmund Wallace Hildick

For me, the main inspiration to write a story or novel is the voice of its central character, or the narrative voice of the story itself. — Scott Bradfield

Confession: I don't want to be one of my characters. I'm mean to them sometimes. Really mean. — Michelle M. Pillow

I'm always writing about character first. Plot, such as it is, comes from the characters. — Daniel Woodrell

The characters tell their story - I am merely the tool used to record it — Marti Melville

When you write a novel you have to live with the characters for a long time. So I prefer short stories. I never wrote anything more than 250 pages. — Ruskin Bond

A word out of place or an interesting choice of vocabulary can spawn a whole character. — Sara Sheridan

Writing a children's book means you cannot spin out long narratives or have complex character development. — Norman Macleod

I'm very comfortable writing in the first person; it dives into the character in a way that's difficult if you're writing in the third person. — Patti Davis

If you get the landscape right, the characters will step out of it, and they'll be in the right place. — Annie Proulx

I love writing from enclosed spaces: you really learn about your characters when they have tight walls to push against. — Lauren Groff

The strongest should come first in comedy because once a character is really established as funny everything he does is funny. — F Scott Fitzgerald

Your characters should be as smart as you are, if not smarter. — Tina Fey

I don't know who a character is till I look into their eyes. — Luke Taylor

I think when you write an enigmatic character into a film, you have to have real confidence that the audience are going to go with it. — Gemma Arterton

I get very invested in characters, it's the only way I find that I can write a book and really make it work. — Gail Simone

I never started from ideas but always from character. — Ivan Turgenev

To hear one talk is better than to see one. — George MacDonald

Sometimes minor characters are based on people I know, on friends of mine. But I'm not writing a thinly veiled version of my own life. — Cassandra Clare

Delicious days ahead for solitude and writing and, oh yes, the holiday meal with family. Live with my characters until term starts in 2012! — Stella Atrium

Don't write about Man; write about a man. — E.B. White

Beginnings are so important. Just finding that right moment to introduce this character, this world, it's everything. — Aryn Kyle

It doesn't matter if your lead character is good or bad. He just has to be interesting, and he has to be good at what he does. — David Chase

All you need to know about plotting is twofold. 1. Give your characters goals. 2. Don't let them reach those goals. — J.A. Konrath

People are writing shorter jokes. The style I've started with was almost trying to keep jokes under 140 characters before Twitter. — Nick Thune

Love it when a compelling new character kicks open your mental door, tracks mud across your brain, and props their feet up on your cerebrum. — Don Roff

If you're not writing your own story, you're a character in someone else's. — Chris Brogan

A story is about a single moment in a character's life when a definitive choice is made, after which nothing is the same. — John L'Heureux

Look seeker, if you love a character, you give them pain, ruin their lives, make them suffer. Maybe even throw in a heroic death! — Varric Tethras

When writing a novel a writer should create living people; people not characters. A character is a caricature. — Ernest Hemingway,

In writing, as in life, always be true to your character. — Laurie Faria Stolarz

May your character not be a writing upon the sand, but an inscription upon the rock! — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

When I write for teens, I feel I can cut through everything and get to the bare bones. I can get straight into the emotional world of the character. — Alice Hoffman

Writing a teen character is something I wanted to try again for a long time! — Emily Giffin

I was never unhappy with the shows. I didn't get into [the writing]. I had an area. My area was my character. My area was what they gave me to do. — David Rasche

I think the best stories always end up being about the people rather than the event, which is to say character-driven. — Stephen King

All you ever really want is a great character and great writing. As an actor, that's the juiciest sandwich you could ever ask for. — Jill Scott

To create tension, dialogue needs to be stretched out. That is, characters should not be immediately responsive. — Sol Stein

I remember my dad working with me on breaking down my script and writing out a back story for my character and all that stuff. — Jason Bateman