A Quote by David Bergen
What fascinates me as a writer is the stuff underneath, To me, what drives a novel is the curiosity behind the character and the depths that you want to find in that character.
Related Quotes
A novel I read when I was about 17 or 18 - 'The World According to Garp,' by John Irving - really made me want to become a writer. The character of Garp is a novelist, and at the time, the whole lifestyle of being a writer was hugely appealing to me.
It's really a misconception to identify the writer with the main character, given that the author creates all the characters in the book. In certain ways, I'm every character. Then again, there is a huge gap between me as a person and what I do in the novel.
You relate to a character and you find that character within yourself. It's all parts of me. I don't leave characters behind. I just let them go.
Here's what I want from a book, what I demand, what I pray for when I take up a novel and begin to read the first sentence: I want everything and nothing less, the full measure of a writer's heart. I want a novel so poetic that I do not have to turn to the standby anthologies of poetry to satisfy that itch for music, for perfection and economy of phrasing, for exactness of tone. Then, too, I want a book so filled with story and character that I read page after page without thinking of food or drink because a writer has possessed me, crazed with an unappeasable thirst to know what happens next.
I love accents; I would love to find more characters with a variety of vocal intonations. It creates a character. It's like you're singing a song. Some people find their character through walking or movement - for me, voice is one of the ways I find parts of the character.
I love accents, I would love to find more characters with a variety of vocal intonations. It creates a character. It’s like you're singing a song. Some people find their character through walking or movement — for me, voice is one of the ways I find parts of the character.
Everyone asks me, 'Why do you choose such subversive or shocking themes?' but when I'm alone in my office, I'm not like, 'OK I'm going to shock.' I want to write about a character who fascinates me, someone who I don't understand.
As a writer, you have to put yourself in service to the character, get behind their eyes by delineating the world where the character develops. You have to listen to the character and see him inside his certain world to know what conclusions he would draw.
If you had told me twenty years ago that I would write a novel set in Russia, much less two, I simply wouldn't have believed you. I had no familiarity with Russia or its history, but part of what drives me as a reader, and more and more as a writer, is curiosity, the desire to explore unfamiliar terrain and inhabit alternate lives.
I think I think in the moment. So when I'm in character, I'm in character, and I'm obviously thinking about what's going on around me, but it's easier to do stuff when you're in character.
Since I am first of all a character writer, that character's emotions are as vivid to me as my own. I always begin with an emotion after I have established a character in my mind. I feel what they feel. I guess that is why it comes across so strongly.
For me, intrigue is a pretty powerful emotion. If you want to know more about a character, if you want to understand how they work, then you have enough curiosity to delve into their skin and their being. That was the biggest pull for me.
Sometimes when a character in a novel is difficult for me to enter, I sue something in myself or in my own life as a doorway into that character's mind and emotions.
I must say Steven Spielberg was great to me, and I loved working with him. He called me up on the phone and was like, "I want you to be in this movie - 1941. There are a couple of parts. You can take whichever one you want. One of them is a main character who is involved in everything, and there's another character who has his own storyline and goes off on his own. He's probably the funnier, more unique character." I said, "Well let me do that second one."
Where does a character come from? Because a character, at the end of the day, a character will be the combination of the writing of the character, the voicing of the character, the personality of the character, and what the character looks like.
The biographical novel sets out to document this truth, for character is plot, character development is action, and character fulfillment is resolution.
Related Authors
Charles Bukowski Quotes
American
Novelist
Charles Dickens Quotes
English
Novelist
Chuck Palahniuk Quotes
American
Novelist
Ernest Hemingway Quotes
American
Novelist
George Eliot Quotes
British
Novelist
George Orwell Quotes
British
Novelist
George R. R. Martin Quotes
American
Novelist
Jane Austen Quotes
British
Novelist
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
German
Novelist
Margaret Atwood Quotes
Canadian
Novelist
Nicholas Sparks Quotes
American
Novelist
Paulo Coelho Quotes
Brazilian
Novelist
Sarah Dessen Quotes
American
Novelist
Stephenie Meyer Quotes
American
Novelist
Veronica Roth Quotes
American
Novelist
Victor Hugo Quotes
French
Novelist