If
you're writing about a character, if he's a powerful character, unless you give
him vulnerability I don't think he'll be as interesting to the reader.
STAN LEE, interview, Mar. 13, 2006
There
is a part of me in every character, naturally. That's why novelists rarely
write good autobiographies. You start one and it becomes another novel.
JOHN DOS PASSOS, New York Times, Nov. 23, 1941
There
are two kinds of characters in all fiction, the born and the synthetic. If the
writer has to ask himself questions — is he tall, is he short? — he had better
quit.
REX STOUT, The
New York Times, Nov. 15, 1953
The
moment comes when a character does or says something you hadn't thought about.
At that moment he's alive and you leave it to him.
GRAHAM GREENE, New York Times, Oct. 9, 1985
Fictional
characters are made of words, not flesh; they do not have free will, they do
not exercise volition. They are easily born, and as easily killed off.
JOHN BANVILLE, attributed, Irish Writers and Their Creative Process
The
first act of insight is throw away the labels. In fiction, while we do not
necessarily write about ourselves, we write out of ourselves, using ourselves;
what we learn from, what we are sensitive to, what we feel strongly
about--these become our characters and go to make our plots. Characters in
fiction are conceived from within, and they have, accordingly, their own
interior life; they are individuals every time.
EUDORA WELTY, On Writing
I
believe so. In its beginning, dialogue’s the easiest thing in the world to
write when you have a good ear, which I think I have. But as it goes on, it’s
the most difficult, because it has so many ways to function. Sometimes I needed
to make a speech do three or four or five things at once—reveal what the
character said but also what he thought he said, what he hid, what others were
going to think he meant, and what they misunderstood, and so forth—all in his
single speech. And the speech would have to keep the essence of this one
character, his whole particular outlook in concentrated form. This isn’t to say
I succeeded. But I guess it explains why dialogue gives me my greatest pleasure
in writing.
EUDORA WELTY, The Paris Review, fall 1972
