A Quote by Les Standiford

Never open your story with a character thinking, I advise my students. As a further precaution, don’t put a character in a room alone – create a friend, a bystander, a genie, for God’s sake, any sentient creature with whom your main character can converse, perhaps argue or, better yet, engage in some action. If a person is out and doing, it’s more likely that something interesting might happen to her or him. Shut up in a room with only his thoughts for company well, that way lies fictional disaster.

Les Standiford

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Action Advise Alone Any Argue Better Character Company Converse Create Creature Disaster Doing Engage Fictional Friend Further Genie God Happen Her Him His Interesting Lies Likely Main Main Character Might More Never Only Open Out Perhaps Person Precaution Put Room Sake Sentient Shut Shut Up Some Something Something Interesting Story Students Thinking Thoughts Up Way Well Whom Your

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Les Standiford
Author
Born: November 1, 1945

The more limitations you put on a character, often times the better a character you'll make them, the more interesting the story becomes because the character can't simply wave a hand and make something happen. They have to work within the framework.

Brandon Sanderson

The more limitations you put on a character often times the better a character you'll make them, the more interesting the story becomes because the character can't simply wave a hand and make something happen. They have to work within the framework.

Brandon Sanderson

I actually take images of things and put them up around the wall and in a room. I set a room aside. It might be colors, it might be animals, or energy and words. And I'll just leave it there, so it begins to work on my subconscious when I think about the character. Which gives me some latitude to be really flexible and spontaneous but within the context of the character and the world of the character without having to think about it. Or I'll look at something or read something and let it work on my subconscious mind.

Wesley Snipes

I think it's hard to differentiate between your wrestling character and your real character - you kind of end up being both. I've always been my wrestling character in and out of the ring and in and out of the dressing room, and I was always really respected in the dressing room by the other wrestlers.

Bret Hart

If you clear your mind, you can fill it with your character. If it is cluttered, if it is anxious, if you're thinking about your date, about your dinner, about filling your refrigerator, there's no room. There's no room for the character you're trying to build.

Henry Winkler

Thoughts mold your features. Thoughts lift your soul heavenward or drag you toward hell. … As nothing reveals character like the company we like and keep, so nothing foretells futurity like the thoughts over which we brood. … To have the approval of your conscience when you are alone with your thoughts is like being in the company of true and loving friends. To merit your own self-respect gives strength to character. Conscience is the link that binds your soul to the spirit of God.

David O. McKay

When I read a good story, I often start thinking, 'Should I live my life according to what this character chooses and values?' It makes me think. I feel like I grew up to be a more mature person while thinking about character development in these fictional situations.

Jenova Chen

The same way that you are the main character of your story, you are only a secondary character in everybody else's story.

Don Miguel Ruiz

The same way that you are the main character of your story, you are only a secondary character in everybody else’s story.

Miguel Angel Ruiz

To create a character who really interests you, try combining aspects of your favourite fictional character with a real person.

Caroline Lawrence

Within a single scene, it seems to be unwise to have access to the inner reflections of more than one character. The reader generally needs a single character as the means of perception, as the character to whom the events are happening, as the character with whom he is to empathize in order to have the events of the writing happen to him.

John Ciardi

Any character that you come up with or create is a piece of you. You're putting yourself into that character, but there's the guise of the character. So there's a certain amount of safety in the character, where you feel more safe being the character than you do being just you

Johnny Depp

I don't think I ever relinquish a person I have known, and surely not my fictional characters. I see them, I hear them, with a clarity that I would call hallucinatory if hallucination didn't mean something else ... A character whom we create can never die, any more than a friend can die ... Through [my characters] I've lived many parallel lives.

Marguerite Yourcenar

I just think there's always room for humanity in acting, one can only hope, so when you bring in the whole life of a person that's playing a character, then surprises happen and are allowed to happen, and so it makes it more interesting.

Lisa Edelstein

I think the best way to become a character is by osmosis as opposed to thinking directly about stuff. The more material that you have and understand and have a going in, then the more complex your character and the understanding of your character will be.

Shailene Woodley

Your opening should give the reader a person to focus on. In a short story, this person should turn up almost immediately; he should be integral to the story's main action; he should be an individual, not just a type. In a novel, the main character may take longer to appear: Anna Karenina doesn't show up in her own novel until chapter eighteen.

Nancy Kress

A Quote by Les Standiford

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