Kurt Vonnegut Quotes

The easiest way for readers to connect with characters and feel sympathy is to make the character entertaining, sympathetic and likeable.

The best books come from someplace deep inside.... Become emotionally involved. If you don't care about your characters, your readers won't either.

Make sure your main characters are likeable. They can be flawed, but your readers need to be able to root for them.

Maybe I'm perverse, but the question of "rooting" for a character, or setting out to write a character for whom other people will root, has never had anything to do with why I read or write fiction. As long as the writing and story remain alive, intense, invigorating, provoking, the characters can be as demonic or saintly as the author wants.

Dialogue is the place that books are most alive and forge the most direct connection with readers. It is also where we as writers discover our characters and allow them to become real.

I'm writing for my ideal reader, for somebody who's willing to take the time, who's willing to get lost in a new world, who's willing to do their part. But then I have to do my part and give them a sound and a voice that they believe in enough to keep going.

With my writing, what I want to do is humanize the young people I write about.

Your protagonist is your reader's portal into the story. The more observant he or she can be, the more vivid will be the world you're creating. They don't have to be super-educated, they just have to be mentally active. Keep them looking, thinking, wondering, remembering.

I have to have a character worth caring about. I tend not to start writing books about people I don't have a lot of sympathy for because I'm just going to be with them too long.

I don't like the idea the viewer can kind of sit there and go, 'Make me like this person.' People aren't inherently sympathetic.

For me, an ideal novel is a dialogue between writer and reader, both a collaborative experience and an intimate exchange of emotions and ideas. The reader just might be the most powerful tool in a writer's arsenal.

I'm completely indifferent to what genre I read provided that I feel sympathy with how a writer perceives being alive in the world.

It's hard to be scared if you don't feel for a character, because you don't care if they die or live.

The fundamentals for me are character and conflict. I put character first because readers will be indifferent to conflict if they are indifferent to the character who is experiencing it.

Writing is weaponized empathy. It's putting yourself in someone else's head. It's finding what's in them that relates to you.

The main character in the book is usually someone you're identifying with because the story is being told through this person's mind.

With every character, the first thing I want to feel is empathy.

It's always really cool as an actor to have a character that people want to see the best for.

It is very touching that you are able to create some kind of impact through a character.

When you're writing a story or an actor playing a role, you should never think of your characters as heroes or villains. You have to think of them as people first.

Everybody has felt at one time or another that everyone else in the world had a better shot than they did, so when you engage that, you engage the reader, and I think you create a character that brings the reader more fully into the story.

What I do in the writing of any character is to try to enter into the mind, heart and skin of a human being who is not myself. It is the act of a writer's imagination that I set the most high.

Building a relationship with the character. It's just like sitting with someone you know. It's very easy to predict when they're going to shake their head or say whatever, but because I'm the author I have to make characters do what I want them to do.

Character is half the reason we read. We're excited because of the plot, but we care because of the characters.

I really become the characters when I'm writing them. I'll become one or two of them more than others, I'm consistent that way.