A Quote by Whitley Strieber
The interesting thing about fiction from a writer's standpoint is that the characters come to life within you. And yet who are they and where are they? They seem to have as much or more vitality and complexity as the people around you.
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You know, the interesting thing about having traveled around the country as much as I have, and I think it's sort of inadvertently what made me come out or at least begin doing things within the community and thinking more about that, was that I get to travel quite a bit.
I've read crime fiction all my life. A thing that's bothered me about crime fiction is that it's generally about one or two people, but there's not much about society. I want to get away from that particular pattern: a lead, a supporting role and backdrop characters.
I've never written a fiction before about real people. . . . I read everything that I could find by people who met them and tried to get some impression of them, but as always when you write fiction, even if you have completely fictitious characters, you start by thinking of what is plausible, what would they say, what would they be likely to do, what would they be likely to think. At some point, if it is every going to come to life, the characters seem to take over and start speaking themselves, and it happened with [COPENHAGEN].
If asked to sketch a picture of the typical archer I would be hard put. They seem to come in all shapes, sizes, colors and backgrounds. Inwardly they seem to have in common a love for the outdoors, a reverence for wildlife, and a close tie with history. There is nothing they seem to enjoy more than telling tall tales around a campfire or talking about archery to others. It would be difficult to find a more interesting group of people.
From a writer's standpoint, each character and story presents its own unique challenges and delights. I'm deeply curious about all of my characters, and I love peeling away their layers to see what's underneath their skin, or secreted deep within their hearts.
The characters I tend to play are a little more interesting than the standard heroes. Romantic leads can be a little more straightforward, I guess. But it just seems to be the parts I get, I don't know what that says about me. I enjoy interesting characters and interesting people, I suppose.
There's the fact that American fiction is basically the most apolitical fiction on the globe. A South American writer wouldn't dare think of writing a novel if it didn't allude to the system into which these people are orchestrated - or an Eastern European writer, or a Russian writer, or a Chinese writer. Only American writers are able to imagine that the government and the corporations - all of it - seem to have no effect whatsoever.
I remember reading an interview with a writer who said that in nonfiction if you have one lie it sort of messes it up. But in fiction the real details give you so much more credibility, because people do so much research just to write fiction. In fiction you're trying to recreate something lifelike.
I love Notting Hill and Westbourne Grove - there is so much life and vitality around Portobello and Ladbroke Grove. It has come up a lot since I started Virgin more than 40 years ago, but there is so much character.
The satisfaction of short fiction does not come close to the rich pleasure I get as a writer in the long deep immersion in the same long work and its growing complexity. I suppose you might say I love to wallow in my characters and imaginary worlds. I love to play with the whole necklace, not just one glittering stone.
The first act of insight is throw away the labels. In fiction, while we do not necessarily write about ourselves, we write out of ourselves, using ourselves; what we learn from, what we are sensitive to, what we feel strongly about--these become our characters and go to make our plots. Characters in fiction are conceived from within, and they have, accordingly, their own interior life; they are individuals every time.
One of the things I find about getting older is that I seem to get louder, more voluble; that I constantly have to walk around repressing my vitality.
My favorite thing about acting is that I can play all kinds of different people. Frankly, I don't consider myself a very interesting person, so the characters I play are usually much more fun.
Characters that are not the norm or a bit out of the ordinary are always a challenge as an actress. You learn more by using different tools for those type of characters. They are always much more fun to play and much more interesting. They take you places that you wouldn't necessarily go in your everyday life.
The writer is often faced with two choices--turn away from the reality of life's intimidating complexity or conquer its mystery by battling with it. The writer who chooses the former soon runs out of energy and produces elegantly tired fiction.
I was trained mainly as a short story writer and that's how I started writing, but I've also become very interested in non-fiction, just because I got a couple of magazine jobs when I was really poor and needed the money and it turned out that non-fiction was much more interesting than I thought it was.
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