A Quote by Lidia Yuknavitch

One of the things that bugs me about the Western Literary Tradition is that the conventions of narrative in particular seem to confine the stories you can tell about characters to tropes of bone-headed action and old models of psychological realism. And as readers, too, we have been conditioned to understand characters as - and forgive me for saying it out loud - what the market says they should be. Namely, safe, clean, proper.

Lidia Yuknavitch

Quote Topics

About Action Been Bone Bugs Characters Clean Conditioned Confine Conventions Forgive Forgive Me Give Me Headed Literary Loud Market Me Models Namely Narrative Old One Of The Things Out Particular Proper Psychological Readers Realism Safe Saying Says Seem Should Stories Tell Things Too Tradition Tropes Understand Western

Quote Author

Lidia Yuknavitch
American - Author
Born: 1963

When writers are self-conscious about themselves as writers they often keep a great distance from their characters, sounding as if they were writing encyclopedia entries instead of stories. Their hesitancy about physical and psychological intimacy can be a barrier to vital fiction. Conversely, a narration that makes readers hear the characters' heavy breathing and smell their emotional anguish diminishes distance. Readers feel so close to the characters that, for those magical moments, they become those characters.

Jerome Stern

Inventing characters is extraordinary: proper authors say so often that characters 'just appear' and that does happen. These people keep leaping out and saying, why don't you write about me?

Sheila Hancock

I first heard about 'Stranger Things' from people dressed as the characters coming up to me at conventions saying, 'Hey, you have to see this show. It's 'Goonies.'

Sean Astin

I do not allow fan-fiction. The characters are copyrighted. It upsets me terribly to even think about fan-fiction with my characters. I advise my readers to write your own original stories with your own characters. It is absolutely essential that you respect my wishes.

Anne Rice

Of course I know that the twins are only words on a page, and I'm certainly not the sort of writer who talks to his characters or harbours any illusions about the creative process. But at the same time, I think it's juvenile and arrogant when literary writers compulsively remind their readers that the characters aren't real. People know that already. The challenge is to make an intelligent reader suspend disbelief, to seduce them into the reality of a narrative.

Michel Faber

The reader has information about the characters that the characters themselves don't have. We all have our secret sides. Even I come to understand things about the characters only through the writing process, as I am going along.

Jaume Cabre

I'm pretty good at fleshing out characters. I like to crawl inside their minds and imaginations and sort of loll about. Sticking to a clean narrative arc gives me some troubles. I've been told that I'm digressive and I'd have to agree. The odd anecdote that in no way relates to the "big idea" is just as illuminating and fascinating to me as anything else pertaining to the through-line.

Gina Ochsner

I do believe that characters in novels belong to their writers and their readers pretty equally. I've learned a lot of things about the characters I write from people who read about them. Readers expand them in ways I don't think of and take them to places I can't go.

Ann Brashares

My father gave me an old Olympia portable when I was in fourth grade. Our ancestors came from Ireland. Our family stories of immigration helped me understand more about my characters in 'The Lemon Orchard.'

Luanne Rice

Here's the weird thing about me. I was never one to tell you stories about me. I was always the guy who others told stories about. I was like that up until I was 35 years old. And then I started telling stories about me onstage.

Bert Kreischer

I went to drama school so I had quite a regimented classical training, regimented process of analyzing a script. I'll go through the whole script and highlight everything my character says about me, and in another color I'll highlight what other characters say about me, and I'll highlight all the things I say about other characters.

Ncuti Gatwa

The most important thing for me in an action sequence is, you understand the characters' intention and the challenges the characters are going to have to face: what the character story is within the action sequence.

Simon Kinberg

I always thought that life is full of stories and characters that feel like literary stories and characters. So when I started making documentaries, they weren't humble empirical things, just following people around. I was always trying to impose a story.

Pawel Pawlikowski

As a rule, I don't worry about genre. I just want to tell a good story, with characters that interest me and my readers.

Stephen King

I don't want to know about the lives of other actors and I don't want people to know too much about me. If we don't know about the private lives of other actors, that leaves us as clean slates when it comes to playing characters. That's the point, they can create these other characters and I can believe them.

Christian Bale

What interests Sam Mendes are characters and relationships, and he was a genius at giving you the freedom to create the type of character you want, and also to explore and have fun with your fellow actors. For him, characters and relationships are really the heartbeat of the film, and then the action is the backdrop. By developing the characters, he makes you care that much more about the action and going on a journey with the characters.

Naomie Harris

A Quote by Lidia Yuknavitch

Quote Topics

Quote Author

Related Quotes

Related Authors