A reviewer once commented that my urban fantasy novels were paced more like epic fantasy, in that they relied on complex world-building and a gradual immersion in the lives of the characters.
I do mourn my characters. I wrote an essay once where I was sure that far back in a marsh there was a hummock - a little hill of hardwoods - and an old farm house, where all the heroines in my novels lived together with all my beloved dead dogs. I've discussed this with my therapist, naturally. He says it's okay in fair amounts.
If you tried to make a 'Game of Thrones' movie, you'd have to eliminate two-thirds of the characters, and there'd have to be one storyline, but on TV, you can really get to know the characters in a way that there just isn't time to do in a movie.
When I was really young. My sister and I would create different characters with our Barbie dolls - I'd be the crazy diva Barbie and she'd be the homeless Barbie.
I've always been a fan of the 19th century novel, of the novel that is plotted, character-driven, and where the passage of time is almost as central to the novel as a major minor character, the passage of time and its effect on the characters in the story.
I'm a great planner, so before I ever write chapter 1, I work out what happens in every chapter and who the characters are. I usually spend a year on the outline.
I love to laugh and dance. That's kind of my nature, though I end up always playing these angry, depressing characters.
But I guess I like playing flawed guys 'cause it gives a place for the characters to go.
In the past, TSR and now Wizards of the Coast have asked me to do game stats for my characters, and I'm never comfortable doing that. It's all relative after all.
Actually, I find it great fun to develop family series with lots of characters.
I like video games, but they are very violent. I want to create a video game in which you have to help all the characters who have died in the other games. 'Hey, man, what are you playing?' 'Super Busy Hospital. Could you leave me alone? I'm performing surgery! This guy got shot in the head, like, 27 times!'
You have to be involved and relate to the characters in order to make a film that is true emotionally.
You take what you know, and you put it through your own prism. If I play characters that break down or cry, it's Gary Oldman crying; it's not the character crying.
You've either got to find a way to make your continuing characters insteresting without making them maudlin or overwrought, or you've got to put more emphasis on the suspects.
It's just so much fun to make up characters, situations, and everything else about a story. I have so much freedom and flexibility to do whatever I want.
First, I would find an object which I would think is suitable for my characters and stories, then write about it, and in the end, I ended up with a house full of thousands of objects.
I've sold 11 of my books to Hollywood. There are all kinds of my books on shelves in Hollywood because the scripts didn't capture the characters.
I think the beauty of the writing of 'Game of Thrones' is not that the characters are fearless; it's how they overcome their fear, you know?
Once I fall in love, finishing a story leaves a hole in my heart. The characters become your friends.
In my students, I'm always dispelling the notion that characters come like a light bulb over the head in cartoons. For me, it's like a shapeless big lump of clay. You just build it into something, and then you step back and go, 'That's not right,' hack it apart, put out a new arm, and say, 'Maybe this will walk around and work.'
I think, for an actor, the whole world is a place of work because if you focus on characters and on stories, they are everywhere, so yeah, I feel very privileged to have had this great opportunities in the international cinema and especially in the American cinema.
At the core, I try to write characters who are real people with real insecurities, fears, hopes, and dreams, which is why hopefully readers can identify with them.
I'm always envious of the actors who get to come to work every day and really grow deep roots there, but it is really fun playing lots of different characters.
If women were particular about men's characters, they would never get married at all.
One of the things you have to be acutely aware of when shooting episodes out of order is your character's relationship with the other characters.
You come before me this morning with clean hands and clean collars. I want you to have clean tongues, clean manners, clean morals and clean characters.
You need characters who want things. They want love, they want recognition, they want happiness.
Sometimes, the smaller roles in movies can be the most interesting. If you only take the stance that you'll only play central characters in movies, you'll find yourself not being able to indulge in that morally grey terrain that makes support characters so rich and interesting.
Language is always evolving. It's difficult to read Shakespeare now because language has shifted. Similarly, kids these days can get to the point really quick in about 140 characters or less because of these new tools.
The same characters that keep reappearing, bigger than life, find their own integrity in doing what they do the way they do it, even if it causes their own deaths.
I'm first and foremost interested in the story, the characters.
I really fall in love with my characters, even the bad ones. I love getting together with them. They tell me what to do; they take me on a wild and wonderful trip.
As actors, we are always playing other characters. It's so exhausting and time consuming to figure them out, so when you get the time to be yourself, you should take it.
It's kind of ironic that the two sports with the greatest characters, boxing and horse racing, have both been on the decline. In both cases it's for the lack of a suitable hero.
Films work due to scripts, characters, and what you see on screen.
I am most proud of the development of the characters as personalities that game players could relate to and care about.
