A Quote by Joan Didion

I don't have a very clear idea of who the characters are until they start talking.

Joan Didion

Quote Topics

Characters Clear Idea Start Talking Until Very

Quote Author

Joan Didion
American - Author
Born: December 5, 1934

Sometimes I'll be fifty, sixty pages into something and I'll still be calling a character "X." I don't have a very clear idea of who the characters are until they start talking. Then I start to love them. By the time I finish the book, I love them so much that I want to stay with them. I don't want to leave them ever.

Joan Didion

Don't start writing your novel until you know your characters very, very well. What they'd do if they saw somebody shoplifting. What they were like at school. What shoes they wear. Spend days - weeks, months - being them until they thicken up and start to breathe.

Deborah Moggach

I was very serene, and I still am, until I start talking in another voice, then suddenly I have a lot of volume and I'm frantic. But I didn't want to be one of those people who's always talking in accents in real life, so I started doing sketch comedy.

Kate McKinnon

When you start talking about same-sex marriage, you start talking about abortion, and I think those issues are very very important and very interesting and very right for us to talk about, but when we allow those issues to cannibalize all other issues we find ourselves homeless while we debate about it.

T. D. Jakes

Usually, people begin with very clear ideas of good movies, they begin with clear ideas about their characters, and then, as they do sequels, they seem to forget the characters more and more, and try to out-spectacle.

Brad Bird

Before there was any talk of a movie, people would sometimes ask me what actors I would imagine playing these characters. And the only thing I could ever say is: I have such a clear idea of these characters that they'd have to play themselves.

Michael Cunningham

If someone wants to start a business but they don't have an idea that they are specifically passionate about, then it may not be the right time for them to start it. Instead, they should work with someone else who is doing something they care about in the meantime until an idea comes up.

Omar Samra

I start with an idea or a problem or a conflict, or even a situation that might be pertinent to the lives of young people, then the characters grow from that point. I try to make strong characters that change and develop and learn from their mistakes.

Sharon Draper

Like, in general I think people have very complicated reasons for wanting things, and we often have no idea whether we’re actually motivated by altruism or a desire to hook up or a search for answers or what. I always get annoyed when in books or movies characters want clear things for clear reasons, because my experience of humanness is that I always want messy things for messy reasons.

John Green

What's actually amazing is that, after a couple of years of living with characters and writing characters and talking about characters, as we sit in the writers room and break episodes, it strikes you, every once in awhile, that you're talking about a character that's played by the same actor, who you've been talking about forever. We talk about a character dying, so you get emotional, and then you realize, "Oh, but wait, that actor is still on the show."

Jeff Pinkner

Writing a book is very personal. It's a very personal relationship. A book will start with something as simple as two men talking about work. That gets the fire going. Sustaining that fire is the hard work. It takes attention and empathy to hone the characters.

Ron Carlson

A lot of times, I'll resist the temptation to visually define a movie until, one, I really understand just what the movie's about, and two, until I start talking to my cinematographer.

Tom McCarthy

People who have grown up in a world where this was not a concern and suddenly start hearing about climate change - it's very difficult. It's a very, very abstract concept. So we need to work on making it very educational and very, very clear, in very simple terms.

Patricia Espinosa

I was very resistant to my intellectualism for a while. I do start with an intellectual idea for a character. A lot of the times, it'll be the opposite of what I feel like is on the page, or it'll be just an idea that I read in a psychology textbook or in a philosophy book. I'll apply something to it that I can start to tinker with.

David Harbour

I start writing with only the vaguest idea about who my characters are and what is going to happen, and the characters and plot come into existence as I go. I've tried doing it the other way, but for me, outlining is a waste of time because I never follow the outline.