Quotes & Sayings About Story Characters

I've wondered, though, if one of the reasons we fail to acknowledge the brilliance of life is because we don't want the responsibility inherent in the acknowledgment. We don't want to be characters in a story because characters have to move and breathe and face conflict with courage. And if life isn't remarkable, then we don't have to do any of that; we can be unwilling victims instead of grateful participants. — Donald Miller

Dastardly devious, cleverly conceived, and just a whole lot of fun to read, DEATH PERCEPTION is Lee Allen Howard on fire and at his finest. Rife with winsome weirdness, it's like the mutant stepchild of Carl Hiaasen and Stephen King, mixing a truly unique paranormal coming-of-age story with a quirky cast of offbeat noir characters into a novel that's simply unforgettable ... and hilariously original. A supernatural crime story, blazing with creative intrigue ... don't miss it. — Michael Arnzen

The story and the characters of 'Girl Online' are mine. — Zoe Sugg

You know, I've always wrote my best stuff when it takes me hardly any time at all. Actually I wrote ... this is actually a really funny story ... 'Ghost Of Vincent Price', I've been wanting to write a song about Vincent Price coz he's one of my favorite characters of all time. — Wednesday 13

Once upon a time she had felt trapped inside her story with its familiar characters and predictable plot. Now she felt locked out of it. — Roderick Townley

When I was eight years old, I played a story game with my younger brother and sister to help them fall asleep. The 'word-story game' was where they would choose a word and I would create a story. Acting and directing are similar to this game, where I am given the words then I fill in the life of the characters. — Carson Grant

I have an idea for a story, and if the idea is going to work, then one of the characters steps forward, and I hear her voice telling the story. This is what has happened with all the books I've written in the first person. — Laurie Graham

I prefer playing characters that are going through turmoil. Most movie characters are just in service to the story. — Jesse Eisenberg

It's a real challenge to complete a story arc and end up with a cool punchline in 120 characters. — Mark Hoppus

The drive of the story is sort of hinted at the beginning, is Joy and Sadness and those two characters. Especially Joy starting to understand that there's more to life than being happy. And so that's based on real life observations and things that we've learned as adults. — Pete Docter

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

As writers, we must keep throwing problems at our characters. Conflict is the heart of good storytelling. Hiking in nature along a twisting trail can remind us what a good story feels like. It's the opposite of a treadmill - or an interstate highway. — Kate Klise

It's always hard, when introducing readers to a new world/set of rules, not to lay it all out manual-style in the opening chapters but make sure to put the action and the characters at the front. If people don't become invested in them and in the story, the world in which it's set will become a burden. — V.E Schwab

I test the movies a lot, and if the audience says they love the movie, we know we're on the right track. And if they tell me they hate it, I try to figure out what I've done wrong. But every time out, the audience wants me to go deeper, they want to know more about the characters, and they don't want these movies to be shallow. So they really urge me to tell them a complicated story, and then when I do so, they're thrilled — Judd Apatow

Plotting is difficult for me, and always has been. I do that before I actually start writing, but I always do characters, and the arc of the story, first ... You can't do anything without a story arc. Where is it going to begin, where will it end. — Elizabeth George

What I like about fairy tales is that they highlight the emotions within a story. The situations aren't real, with falling stars and pirates. But what you do relate to is the emotions that the characters feel. — Charlie Cox

I'm not one of these 'the characters write themselves; the story just fell out of me' kind of writers. Wish it was like that. — Markus Zusak

Comedy always works better when you're tracking the story and you care about the characters. That's why there's a lot of movies where there's not a ton of jokes, but you get huge laughs because there's a moment of relief. — Andy Samberg

I believe that if the story is fleshed out and the characters more believable, the reader is more likely to take the journey with them. In addition, the plot can be more complex. My characters are very real to me, and I want each of my characters to be different. — Michael Robotham

A book is simply a snap shot of the full story. — Erica Goros

Life is too short to be anything but real with the cast of characters God has placed in the story of your life. Love well, laugh often, and find your life in Christ. Don't hide away or be a follower. Be the wonderful unique person God made you to be, and know that your purpose will always be best when defined by your faith in him — Karen Kingsbury

I don't know what I was looking for . . . I felt empty. I guess. Not hearing from you made it all seem surreal, like you were never there, a dream, a figment of my imagination.

I went to your site that day to . . . I guess, double-check.

I thought. . . maybe you wrote something, a new story . . . a message . . . anything.

I did find a new story . . .

It wasn't about us . . .

And I ended up feeling even emptier. — Stjepan Sejic

Television provides the opportunity for an ongoing story - the opportunity to meld the cast and the characters and a world, and to spend more time there. — David Lynch

His characters may be cardboard, but each has a clear, uncomplicated purpose. Every moment of the story contributes to building conflict. — Donald Maass

In any story, drama may be intensified by the characters realizing by how narrow a margin they had managed to succeed - that is, where coincidence played a role. This is one of the more realistic ways to use coincidence because rarely do we realize how important a coincidental event is until after the fact. — Jane Lindskold

They are young, full of ambition and dreams; they are still unable to imagine that there might be a story in the world in which they are not the main characters. — Juan Gomez Barcena

Parents can do three things to make reading active. (1) Elaborate and explain the text to the child. This extends and deepens the experience of the story. (2) Relate the story to the child's own experiences. An interest in reading and understanding the meaning of the text occur if there is 'further information' to personalize the text. (3) Ask questions to ensure the child understands the story, thinks about the characters and plot, and extends their imagination. — Colin Baker

The comic book, and I've said it before, is a treasure trove. It's a grab bag. We certainly have characters and story lines that we really want to do - but to get there in a TV series, you have to take your time. Sometimes you can't get right to it. They're two different mediums. So we make it our own and really own the material. I like to think of it as an alternate universe. — Glen Mazzara

I write as if I were drunk. It is a process of intuition rather than placing myself above my story like a puppeteer pulling strings. For me, it's a scary, chaotic process over which I have little control. Words demand other words, characters resist me. — Elif Safak

Before I start, I trick myself into thinking I know what's going to happen in the story, but the characters have ideas of their own, and I always go with the character's choices. Most of the time I discover plot twists and directions that are better than what I originally had planned. — Neal Shusterman

One of the things that makes characters real is details. Life offers a lot of details. You just have to choose and use them wisely. When you give them to fictional people and a fictional story, their purpose and their meaning changes, so it's best to see the version in the book as fiction entirely, wherever it started out. — Nick Earls

I think the tricky balance, the most important thing more than the horror is to have a compelling story, compelling drama, a show about great characters that you care about and you want to come back every week to see what they're up to. — Oren Peli

There are almost no characters in this story, and almost no dramatic confrontations, because most of the people in it are so sick and so much the listless playthings of enormous forces. One of the main effects of war, after all, is that people are discouraged from being characters. — Kurt Vonnegut

It's quite difficult to know who owns a story. Is it the writer, who crafted it? The characters, who carry the plot forward? Or you, the reader, who breathes life into them? Or perhaps none of the three can exist without the other. Perhaps without this magical combination, a story would be nothing more than words on a page. — Jodi Picoult

With a novel, which takes perhaps years to write, the author is not the same man he was at the end of the book as he was at the beginning. It is not only that his characters have developed
he has developed with them, and this nearly always gives a sense of roughness to the work: a novel can seldom have the sense of perfection which you find in Chekhov's story, The Lady with the Dog. — Graham Greene

Sometimes, when you are reading a book you are enjoying very much, you begin thinking so hard about the characters and the story that you might forget all about the author, even if he is in grave danger and would very much appreciate your help. The same thing can happen if you are looking at a photograph. You might think so hard about whatever is in the photograph that you forget all about the person behind the camera. — Lemony Snicket

We have a slate of four films. From Karen Young - the USA bestselling author - we have Blood Bayou. Again, we're relying on the story to tell itself and the characters tell it and not (relying on) shock value. It's a suspenseful drama ... The best way I can describe it is Pelican Brief meets Time to Kill. — Drew Waters

On past records I usually did start with a story or an idea for a song and then write around it, but on Achilles' Heel I would just start writing and try to let the song and my sub-conscience determine the direction. which is a goofy way of saying I tried not to decide before hand what the song and or the characters would do and be like. — David Bazan

That's the great thing about a series: you're driving to work, and you have an idea for a story for your characters, and you can go into work, and it's gonna be a television show. I mean that's what's great about the job. — James L. Brooks

In displaying the psychology of your characters, minute particulars are essential. God save us from vague generalizations! Be sure not to discuss your hero's state of mind. Make it clear from his actions. Nor is it necessary to portray many main characters. Let two people be the center of gravity in your story: he and she. — Anton Chekhov

For the contingent out there who sneer at heroes like Superman and Wonder Woman and Captain America, those icons who still, at their core, represent selfless sacrifice for the greater good, and who justify their contempt by saying, oh, it's so unrealistic, no one would ever be so noble ... grow up. Seriously. Cynicism is not maturity, do not mistake the one for the other. If you truly cannot accept a story where someone does the right thing because it's the right thing to do, that says far more about who you are than these characters. — Greg Rucka

Fiction has consisted either of placing imaginary characters in a true story, which is the Iliad, or of presenting the story of an individual as having a general historical value, which is the Odyssey. — Raymond Queneau

But the people who took the bus didn't experience the city as we experienced the city. The pain made the city more beautiful. The story made us different characters than we would have been if we had skipped the story and showed up at the ending an easier way. — Donald Miller

Although I'm very lazy when it comes to writing, I'm not that lazy when it comes to thinking. I like to develop the plan of a short story, then cut it as short as possible, try to evolve all the necessary details. I know far more about the characters than what actually comes out of the writing. — Jorge Luis Borges

Actors want to work. Give them characters they want to play, or a story they want to tell, and hopefully the budget will follow. — Lorene Scafaria

You know that feeling," she said, "when you are reading a book, and you know that it is going to be a tragedy; you can feel the cold and darkness coming, see the net drawing tight around the characters who live and breathe on the pages. But you are tied to the story as if being dragged behind a carriage and you cannot let go or turn the course aside. — Cassandra Clare

Do you ever get moods when life seems absolutely meaningless? It's like a badly-constructed story, with all sorts of characters moving in and out who have nothing to do with the plot. And when somebody comes along that you think really has something to do with the plot, he suddenly drops out. After a while you begin to wonder what the story is about, and you feel that it's about nothing - just a jumble. — P.G. Wodehouse

Now, I admire The Sims as a game, but from a story viewpoint, there are two glaring problems. First, your relationship with those characters is like they're bugs in a jar. There's no empathy. And secondly, you've got this clunky, chemistry-set interface between you and them, with bars to show how tired or angry they are. It's all tell not show. — Dave Morris

The only reason ever to make a sequel is to spend more time with the characters that people love: to tell more of their story. — Elizabeth Banks

Authors can only soft sell the environment. Create a wonderful story around the environment involving the characters that leaves a lasting impression on the reader's mind. — Wilbur Smith

The following is a fictionalized and utterly false account of the events that most definitely did not happen on June 9-10, 1967. And yet, while all the characters in this story are little green men and women running around inside my head, the events that served as inspiration, the historical facts, as it were, must be considered no less than a sibling of the tale contained in these pages: the story I didn't write, but could have written--the book this could have been, but isn't. — Montague Kobbe

Most writers have no idea how to make a film. It's a totally different skill set. Nor is it just to translate exactly what's on the page directly on to the screen - because that would be terrible. It would be five hours long, and the structure would be a mess. But the writers know the characters and the story. — Gayle Forman

Everyone always talks about the magic of books being able to take you to other places, to let you see exotic worlds, to make you experience new and interesting things. Well, do you think words alone can do this? Of course not! If you've ever thought that books are boring, it's because you don't know how to read them correctly. From now on, when you read a book, I want you to scream the words of the novel out loud while reading them, then do exactly what the characters are doing in the story. Trust me, it will make books way more exciting. Even dictionaries. Particularly dictionaries. — Brandon Sanderson

We seek to craft characters who inspire empathy: characters our audience will care for and, as a result, will care about what happens to them and thus will share the journey we have charted. A story, after all, is the character's journey. — Greg Rucka

Whether your characters journey daily to a distant moon or just down the street to the corner bar, what matters to the reader is the singular event that distinguishes one such voyage from all the others and makes for a story worth telling. — Peter Selgin

Characters are so important to a story that they actually decide where the story is going. When I write, I know my characters. I know how things are going to end, and I know some important incidents along the way. — E.L. Konigsburg

When I first started you would pitch a story because without a good story, you didn't really have a film. Later, once sequels started to take off, you pitched a character because a good character could support multiple stories. and now, you pitch a world because a world can support multiple characters and multiple stories across multiple media. — Henry Jenkins

The reader is going to imprint on the characters he sees first. He is going to expect to see these people often, to have them figure largely into the story, possibly to care about them. Usually, this will be the protagonist. — Nancy Kress

The truth, and nothing but the truth, is that dawn begins with a wrestling match with my soul and a systematic rejection of all the other useful possibilities a day offers. I make obeisance to the story, its characters, and the muse with burnt offerings. — Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor

As readers, we want not only a strong story, but also characters we can relate to, characters that feel real. We have to find something of ourselves in them. Each character, even those only there to serve the mechanics of the plot, should have a number of layers. The entire world you are stepping into as a reader must feel real. It must have resonance, you must be able to touch the light; smell the smells. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

I read and write for character. If I like and can relate to the characters in a story I can enjoy any kind of story. I also want something with a definitive plot - you know, beginning, middle and end--that has forward motion. I don't like series books that leave you hanging after you've finished a book and in my own fiction I try to make sure that there's always an entry point for those who are new to the book as well as long-time readers. — Charles De Lint

I didn't set out to write a book with no real male characters, but men were not important to my narrator, who was much more interested in maternal and pseudo-maternal love, so they were unimportant to me. I didn't even notice the lack of men in the story until I finished it. But once I did notice it, I was kind of delighted. Apparently, my subconscious is totally sexist. — Janice Erlbaum

Main characters never die in books. If they did, the story would be ruined, or over."
"Everybody is a main character to someone. There are no minor characters. — Amy Harmon

Fiction, like sculpture or painting, begins with a rough
sketch. One gets down the characters and their behavior any
way one can, knowing the sentences will have to be revised,knowing the characters' actions may change. It makes no difference
how clumsy the sketch is - sketches are not supposed
to be polished and elegant. All that matters is that, going over
and over the sketch as if one had all eternity for finishing one's
story, one improves now this sentence, now that, noticing
what changes the new sentences urge, and in the process one
gets the characters and their behavior clearer in one's head,
gradually discovering deeper and deeper implications of the
characters' problems and hopes. — John Gardner

Another strand of my writing is the importance of the idea. If you think about fiction writing as a spectrum, where at one end of the spectrum in the infrared, are the story tellers, and the people for whom creation of wonderful characters and telling a good story is the most important thing. — Alan Lightman

I'd say Rob Reiner's 'When Harry Met Sally' is my all-time favorite. It made me realize there's a way of telling a story where the audience is so in love with the characters that they forget you're even telling a story. — Tim Story

He must shape simultaneously (in an expanding creative moment) his characters, plot, and setting, each inextricably connected to the others; he must make his whole world in a single, coherent gesture, as a potter makes a pot ... — John Gardner

When my lady and I sit down and watch TV, I find she gets annoyed at characters because they don't do what she would do in the situation. I'm always like, 'Well, she has to do that because that's what the story is.' — Dallas Roberts

The apple which tempts my characters is the one that will remove the knowledge of good and evil. I suppose it's something of a reversal of the conventional Eden story: Freedom of thought is perhaps the greatest good, and needs to be fought for and sacrificed for. — John Christopher

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

I hate it when characters know things but only reveal them when it's convenient to the story. I'd never do that. That's cheating. — Simon Toyne

The Story Girl was written in 1910 and published in 1911. It was the last book I wrote in my old home by the gable window where I had spent so many happy hours of creation. It is my own favourite among my books, the one that gave me the greatest pleasure to write, the one whose characters and landscape seem to me most real. All the children in the book are purely imaginary. The old "King Orchard" was a compound of our old orchard in Cavendish and the orchard at Park Corner. "Peg Bowen" was suggested by a half-witted, gypsy-like personage who roamed at large for many years over the Island and was the terror of my childhood. — L.M. Montgomery

But keep characters in propinquity long enough and a story will always develop a plot. — Keith Miller

Discover everything about your characters that you can before you write your story. If you get stuck at any point, they will write your dialog for you. — Michael J. Kannengieser

Anne DeGrace is a gifted story teller and Far From Home contains some of her most intriguing characters. Thoroughly enjoyable. — Paulette Jiles

The thing I'm writing now, I have various characters, and all of a sudden, out of nowhere, this couple dies. And they have a daughter ... I thought, 'OK, we have to do something with the daughter' ... then I realized she's not really their daughter. She has her own story. And she's become the most interesting character. She was this throwaway character that I didn't even conceive of before I started writing her into it, and now she's become very important in this book. — Sandra Dallas

When you describe the miserable and unfortunate, and want to make the reader feel pity, try to be somewhat colder - that seems to give a kind of background to another's grief, against which it stands out more clearly. Whereas in your story the characters cry and you sigh. Yes, be more cold ... The more objective you are, the stronger will be the impression you make. — Anton Chekhov

I think almost always that what gets me going with a story is the atmosphere, the visual imagery, and then I people it with characters, not the other way around. — Ann Beattie

There's also something happening in television similar to what happened in the '80s, when people stopped taking so many drugs and wanted to hear real instruments in music again. I think people want plot, story and characters. Those are more important than having a big star. — Jessica Pare

All characters come from people I know, but after the initial inspiration, I tend to modify the characters so they fit with the story. — Nicholas Sparks

But, while Starkfield is modeled on a fairly specific place (New England), we can also think of it as any place that a person gets stuck in, any place where it seems impossible to stay, and impossible to leave. This can be a geographical location, a state of mind, a building or a city, or tiny kitchen on a broken down farm.

When we notice that there is also a "Springfield" in the story, we realize that Starkfield (stark meaning, hard, bare, difficult) really is supposed to be the place of eternal hardship. Springfield is the place Zeena goes to visit doctors and get medicine. This is perhaps to emphasize that Starkfield has the absolute worst kind of winters you can imagine. This also emphasizes that spring (and health) is always a false promise for the characters — Unknown

There are no composite characters or events in this book. I occasionally omitted people and events, but only when that omission had no impact on either the veracity or the substance of the story. — Cheryl Strayed

It's difficult from one story to jump in another story, 2 stories are okay for one hour. But more and more characters you start losing the link. (Thriller 2) — Deyth Banger

Along with the other animals, the stones, the trees, and the clouds, we ourselves are characters within a huge story that is visibly unfolding all around us, participants within the vast imagination, or Dreaming, of the world. — David Abram

And I have to credit David Jacobs with the opportunities he gave me. He was totally into sharing the creation of characters. David put together a show that told the story of people over many years' time and that was greatly enjoyable. Though nowadays that is frowned upon. — William Devane

All you can do is focus on telling the best story you can with compelling characters. If you do it right, it will endure. If you do it wrong, it won't. — J. Michael Straczynski

We do long-form-style improv. Our focus was characters and telling a long arc story over about an hour and a half. It was closer to a one-act play than one-off sketches. — Tatiana Maslany

I started a novel back in high school. It wasn't very good. It was the opposite of good. The writing itself wasn't too bad, and the characters were interesting. But the story was a mess, and it was full of fantasy cliches. Dwarf with an axe. Barbarian warrior. I don't ever think I'd bother finishing that. It's just not worth my time. — Patrick Rothfuss

I just wish life was more like my books," Fern complained [ ... ] "Main characters never die in books. If they did, the story would be ruined, or over."
"Everybody is a main character to someone," Bailey theorized, winding his way through the busy hall and out the nearest exit into the November afternoon. "There are no minor characters. — Amy Harmon

[E]verything is fiction. When you tell yourself the story of your life, the story of your day, you edit and rewrite and weave a narrative out of a collection of random experiences and events. Your conversations are fiction. Your friends and loved ones - they are characters you have created. And your arguments with them are like meetings with an editor - please, they beseech you, you beseech them, rewrite me. You have a perception of the way things are, and you impose it on your memory, and in this way you think, in the same way that I think, that you are living something that is describable. When of course, what we actually live, what we actually experience - with our senses and our nerves - is a vast, absurd, beautiful, ridiculous chaos. — Keith Ridgway

It is always a tense moment for an author to see how someone hasillustrated his or her story, because the author has lived for so long with these characters, sometimes for years. — Pat Mora

I see myself as a novelist, period. I mean, the material I work with is what is classified as science fiction and fantasy, and I really don't think about these things when I'm writing. I'm just thinking about telling a story and developing my characters. — Roger Zelazny

Advice to a new writer: There are no rules in this profession. Do what is good for you. Read books and watch films that stimulate your writing. In your writing, go where the pain is; go where the pleasure is; go where the excitement is. Believe in your own original approach, voice, characters, story. Ignore critics. Have nerve. Be stubborn. — Anne Rice

I could be judging unfairly, but all the people I've met who've really changed from unhealthy to healthy have a story, a story about hitting rock bottom, realizing what they were doing wrong, and radically changing the way they live so they don't repeat their mistakes. Characters only change when they live through a story. — Donald Miller

In my opinion, visual effects are great when it compliments a good story, and action is great when it compliments a good story, but just to have them for the sake of having them, it gets a little boring, especially if you're talking a TV series. At least with a movie that's an hour and a half to two hours, you see it and you're impressed, and then you're out. With a series, if it's only that, week after week after week, there's nothing there to bring you back. You have to get invested in the characters and care about them and want to follow them. — Drew Roy

A lot of the challenge with TV, as opposed to making movies, is that you have to leave room for the characters in the story to tell themselves. Sometimes you don't know where a character is going to go and what's going to happen to them until you've seen the actor take that part and make it their own. — Bruno Heller

I'm just an entertainer. In a way crime stories are boring. A crime's been committed and at the end you know it will be solved. So you've got to make the story interesting besides it just being a plot. And that's why character matters, why you've got to make the characters interesting. — Jo Nesbo

If you have a story to tell, put it out there. Get the thing done. No excuses. No procrastinating. No apologies. It will never be as good as you want it to be, so forget about perfection. Just be satisfied that you've done the best work you can do at this stage in your life as an author. Then roll the rocket onto the launch pad and fire it off. After that, write another story. Always keep going. Move fast. Stay one step ahead of the forces of distraction and self-doubt. Love your characters enough to give them a good home. Love your readers enough to give them a place of refuge from life's tragedies, big and small. And love the world you live in enough to make it the world of your dreams. — James Hampton

It doesn't do to get attached to these secondary characters. It's not their story. They come and go, and when they go, they're gone for good. — Diane Setterfield

When I watch cop shows, I really enjoy them because you can really follow the story and get involved, and the characters are always really interesting. — Vicky McClure