28th July 2016 | for Creatives | characters, writing, acting, Stephen Gregg |
"If your character doesn't have a goal, she's just a bunch of your words deceptively held together by an actor."
"It's this funny headspace you get in, where you're acting, really. .... You literally pretend you are this person, and you go about your life as if you are this person. And so, when people will ask me, 'Did you like this character?' I don't know. Because I'm so far inside them, I can't judge them at all. You're behaving as if you are this person."
"First rule of writing a play (or acting, lighting design, directing): Make a choice. You can always change it later."
"In every character I write, there's a little piece of me. And they're all interesting to me, enough that I would write a book about them ... It's exciting to imagine being different people."
"When you're writing, you have to get really close to your subject and see the weird and unexpected 'colors' there. Even a character who's supposed to be incredibly sexy should have flaws. Even a tragic scene should have those weird moments of humor or joy. Those little details are the rich part of your writing, and the only thing language should be doing is translating what you 'see' as cleanly as possible to readers."
"I really don't think about my readers when I write—I am utterly at the beck and call of my characters and so absorbed in the world of their story that it becomes my reality."
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