A Quote by Amelia Atwater-Rhodes
Honestly, I get character ideas from the most inane places. Sometimes a song will give me an idea. Sometimes I will just hear a snippet of conversation that ends up having nothing to do with the book that emerges.
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Of course, even if the directors like my ideas or the designs I do, they may end up changing the story so much, that those characters have to change, or get cut out altogether, and that's just the way it is. Sometimes the directors are designers themselves, or they want to work with a character designer who will do things in their own distinct way - sometimes the most important thing I do is figure out what they don't want to do, by experimenting. Either way, whether they use my ideas or not, I get paid, so it's all good.
There are certain things that I'll hear about and that I think will make a great book and I put it in a file. Sometimes it's a situation that interests me, and I don't even realize what I'm trying to say about it until I get closer to it. Sometimes the book after that I've written 125 pages of, and I can tell you what the book is after that. I just sort of have a linear progression, but more than anything, the topics land in your lap. I don't feel that I go out searching for them.
Sometimes ideas are coming so fast that I have to stop doing one song to get another. But I don't forget the first one. If it works, it will always be there. It's like the truth: it will find you and lift you up. And if it ain't right, it will dissolve like sand on the beach.
I know that sometimes when you are really worried about something, it ends up not being nearly as bad as you think it will be, and you get to be relieved that you were just being silly, worrying so much over nothing. But sometimes it is just the opposite. It can happen that whatever you are worried about will be even worse than you could have possibly imagined, and you find that you were right to be worried, and even that, maybe, you weren't worried enough.
I'll get into conversations with other people, and all of a sudden they will say something that sparks that... either the titles to me, or just the conversation itself will spark an idea for a song.
I love the idea of seeing a character - I mean, there's nothing like seeing a character and having the huge detail and roundness that a character in a book can give you. It's so much more full than a character in a script can give you, isn't it?
Sometimes I think too much, or sometimes I don't think enough as the character. Sometimes you just miss a moment, or sometimes you hear something that a character's saying that you haven't heard before and you react differently.
Sometimes I'll get ideas in the middle of the night. Sometimes at 3 in the morning I'll get up, and I have a notebook by my bed and have to write it down. I'll dream an idea. Sometimes I see an image online, and I think, 'OK, let's make that a three-layer cake!'
Writin songs is like a mystery. The most difficult thing to do is have a good idea. If you have a decent idea, the songs are the easy part. Actually having something to say is the hard part. If you get an idea for a song, then it pulls you along. There are just some ideas that you get that are really hard to edit out; it's hard to stop thinking about some bad ideas. So you just finish it and you end up putting it on a record.
Often people will ask me why a song was chosen and I don't always have a good answer for it. You try ideas and something works or sounds really cool. Sometimes songs are on the nose and sometimes they're more mysterious.
People get sick and sometimes they get better and sometimes they don't. And it doesn't matter if the sickness is cancer or if it's depression. Sometimes the drugs work and sometimes they don't. Sometimes the drugs work for a while and then they stop. Sometimes the alternative stuff works and sometimes it doesn't. And sometimes you wonder if no outside interference makes any difference at all; if an illness is like a storm, if it simply has to run its course and, at the end of it, depending on how robust you are, you will be alive. Or you will be dead.
I give the character a history and a full life; this way the tears come naturally for the character in whatever situation calls for tears. Also, sometimes a certain song will help me feel emotions that evoke tears.
I find inspiration in many places. Sometimes music gives me the kernel of a story. Sometimes it's dissatisfaction with the plot of a movie or a book that gets me thinking. Sometimes it's love of a movie or book.
If I hear Anna say something, and I completely misheard her say it, and she goes, 'That's not what I said, but that's a great idea.' Whose idea was it? It was nobody's idea. It came out of thin air, but it was a misunderstanding. That's really what's fun about having a partner to throw ideas off of. Sometimes you get those good accidents.
Sometimes I'll hear some music in my head or I'll go to the piano and mess around and come up with a tune, or be on the guitar and come up with some chords - or I'll come up with lines, or just some words, or just a sentence. It could be the title of a song. I do that all the time. I write titles of songs a lot. And sometimes I'll end up writing a song that I don't have a title for and I'll say, "Oh, this goes with that title".
Sometimes something will come along, and it feels easy and sometimes you'll get 85 percent there on a song and the last 15 percent will elude you for three years.
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