Jason Isbell Quotes

When writing a novel a writer should create living people; people not characters. A character is a caricature.

What makes characters real are details, and if you're crafting a person from scratch, you're probably not going to pay as much attention to a question like, 'Does this person bite their nails?'

I treat all my characters as if they were real, and I am scrupulous about the details of their lives.

Never argue with your characters; they know themselves better than you do.

I try to create characters that I am fascinated by on some level or intrigued by or can't stand.

What I'm really trying to do is create unique characters.

I put heavy emphasis on the characters.

I know the relationships, and I already know my characters and how I'm going to reveal my characters to my readers - how I'm going to feed them information about that character. That stuff doesn't have to be in my outline.

A new character is like bringing a new human being into your life.

I mean, can I really create a full, three-dimensional character? I don't know anymore. I'm certainly going to try.

The characters are always the focal point of a book for me, whether I'm writing or reading. I may enjoy a book that has an intriguing mystery or a good plot, but to become one of my real favorites, it has to have great characters.

I spend a lot of time with my characters.

I try to begin with a strong grasp of my characters. Even if it's schematic, I need it clear in my head who these people are.

My characters are not plastic.

A character who is thought-out is not born, he or she is contrived. A born character is round, a thought-out character is flat.

I can tell you that as a writer and as a reader, I regard character as king. Or queen. No matter how riveting the action or interesting the plot twists, if I don't feel like I'm meeting someone who feels real, I'm not going to be compelled to read further.

I tend to write one character at a time. But I don't write the entirety of one character at a time.

I like to take a character and develop it.

I hate the analyzing thing. People say, 'Why do you think your character did that? I don't know. I'm not an analyst, and they're not in psychotherapy. Unless it's a film where they're in therapy.

Developing characters is a strange thing. In the beginning they are abstract and I wonder how to move on from there.

In creative writing, I teach that characters arise out of our need for them.

The question of likability is a bit of a puzzler for me. You know, I don't write people with likability in mind. It's more whether or not I find them compelling.

When you create a character, you create it for yourself - you do whatever you want. It's your job to explore it in as many different avenues as you can in order to make it a fully wounded character.

Stories are important, but I'm really into characters, and if you can give birth to a good one, that's true success.

We have a writing process that's very much you try to create the character in a complicated way and then you let the story lead you to discovering who the character is in a natural way.