A Quote by Nelson DeMille

I sometimes use some personality traits to fashion part of a character. Most of my characters are composites of either people I know or people in the public eye.

Nelson DeMille

Quote Topics

Character Characters Composites Either Eye Fashion Know Most Part People Personality Personality Traits Public Public Eye Some Sometimes Traits Use

Quote Author

Nelson DeMille
American - Author
Born: August 23, 1943

I usually base my characters on composites of people I know. One trumpet player in SIDE MAN is really a mix of four different guys I knew growing up. Patsy , the waitress, is a mix of about three different people. I like doing it that way. I start with the characters, as opposed to plot, location, or some visual element. I write more by ear than by eye. I always work on the different sound of each character, trying to make sure each has a specific voice and speech pattern, which some writers could care less about.

Warren Leight

I would hesitate to say the characters [ in Bink & Gollie] are too related to either to us [me and Alison McGhee], but they certainly draw on our physical traits and personality traits and then exaggerate them to the nth degree.

Kate DiCamillo

Movies are a powerful medium. People think you are your character. I've had plenty of people who think I'm Drago. They don't know about the chemical engineering part of my personality. They don't know about the geek part of my personality.

Dolph Lundgren

Some of my characters are drawn from people I know whereas others are an amalgamation of people or one specific person. Sometimes a character is simply fictional. It is always a mix.

Zoya Akhtar

My characters are usually composites. I wish I could pretend that I make up all of these characters, but no. I steal from people. But people will say to me, "Oh, that's me!" and I'm thinking, no, that's not you!

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

I try to do as much as possible for every character. Some of them, it is easier to do the research because you have either real examples that you work with, maybe some specific person that inspires you in that case, or the performances from other people, or the characters, or a character from a book.

Penelope Cruz

It's easy for people to be characterized in public life based upon their personality, and I have a very direct, blunt personality. And I understand why some people would then characterize that, especially people who don't like you, as bullying, but it's not that.

Chris Christie

Some people are the best lyricists, got the most gas, but they don't know have the personality or the people skills to go out there and network and get they recognition and they name out there. Sometimes people can get in the way of they own selves man, real talk.

E-40

Johnny Storm is such an iconic character. There's a lot of personality traits and things to him that people are really going to look forward to seeing.

Michael B. Jordan

I think in the end, when you're famous, people like to narrow you down to a few personality traits. I think I've just become this ambitious, say-whatever's-on-her-mind, intimidating person. And that's part of my personality, but it's certainly not anywhere near the whole thing.

Madonna Ciccone

My whole life, I've been judged for how I look, which is part and parcel of being in the public eye, playing sexy roles and posing for lad's mags, but I want people to like me for my personality and brain.

Emily Atack

I don't base any character on a real person, and really don't do composites either. I make them up.

Nora Roberts

I tend to enunciate pretty well. It's always seemed that my voice is one of those voices that people can recognize pretty easily - which has been a bit of a drawback for some characters because you're supposed to lose yourself in the character, but sometimes people look at a character and go "Oh, it's 'Weird Al.'"

Al Yankovic

I think people are a mixture of everything. I like desperate characters because they do things that most of us normally wouldn't do. If a character is a scoundrel or a liar you think you know them, but then I can bring some emotion to them and they become much fuller than you ever imagined. So what I try to do is have a story where you don't quite know where it's going, and characters who you don't quite know where they're going.

Richard Shepard

I think pattern makers are some of the most underrated, undervalued people in fashion. They're the people who are sometimes the geniuses in designing clothing.