Emily Giffin Quotes

I always find stuff in my characters to relate to.

I like to write first-person because I like to become the character I'm writing.

I normally write in the first person, and my narrators are as real to me as any of the people I have worked with. They live and breathe in my imagination.

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

I wouldn't like to be a character in one of my books!

When one is writing a novel in the first person, one must be that person.

It doubles your perception, to write from the point of view of someone you're not.

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.

When I'm writing fiction, I'm sort of interested by the fact that somehow or other I can have the feeling of actually seeing things through someone else's eyes.

Part of me becomes the characters I'm writing about. I think readers feel like they are there, the way I am, as a result.

I wrote my first play at the age of 10, 55 years ago, and I've always found it a fantastic relief to imagine I know what things would be like from the point of view of other individuals and to send out signals from where I actually am not. Playwrights never need to write from the place where they are.

But I always need to identify with a character to write about him or her - and by 'identify,' I mean see the world through that person's eyes and have a strong sense of the inner logic of their acts and decisions, wacky or wrongheaded though they might be. In that sense, I think there's some of me in all of them.

And before I'd got to the end of the first paragraph, I'd come up slap bang against a fundamental problem that still troubles me today whenever I begin a story, and it's this: where am I telling it from?

I think the moment you're writing about somebody who's not exactly you, then the challenge is all equal.

I don't want to draw from my own experiences in life. I first like to become the character and then think from her point of view.

When people watch my movies and web series, I want them to either see themselves in those characters or something they can relate to.

There are aspects of writing that require you to image yourself in various roles and guises, to stand in the shoes of others, to 'act' on an inner stage.

I think one of the hardest things about doing a book in the first person is that to a certain extent each day, when you begin to do your work, you're climbing into somebody else's skin.

One of the most difficult things in writing a novel or anything at all is to choose the point of view from which it's going to be told.

I love writing in first person more than third. I have to basically suspend my own world. I don't exist. I'm just a conduit. So I can be eight years old. I can be the mother of a kid that you find out certain things I'm not going to say.

As a writer, it is always fun to imagine yourself in someone else's shoes.

I think I've written 40 books, and none of them have been heavy on action. I'm an introspective person.

I've written short stories from male perspectives before, and I've never had a problem with it as long as I've understood the character's emotions and motivations.

If there is any secret to my success, I think it's that my characters are very real to me. I feel everything they feel, and therefore I think my readers care about them.

All the writing elements are the same. You need to tell a good story... You've got good characters... People think there's some dramatic difference between writing 'Little Bear' and the 'Hunger Games,' and as a writer, for me, there isn't.