Kate McKinnon Quotes

You need the audience to become invested in the characters and in order to become invested, they need to identify with the characters... and that's why the characters need to be real.

One of the things that separates a good genre movie from a bad genre movie, I always think, ironically, is when you care about the people. The dime a dozen ones are where you don't have any awareness of the character.

If you can't laugh at your own characters, or shed a tear for them, or even get angry at one of them, no one else will either.

Audiences need to engage with characters.

You have to present characters an audience can relate to.

If we get caught up in a story, it's because we've started to care about the characters, and that can only happen if we've moved beneath the surface.

People like the comedy more when they care about the characters.

As a writer, you have to realize that people want to like the characters, so you have to be careful to keep them involved.

Sympathetic characters usually have a voice. They usually don't have any trouble being heard.

And the most important thing - apart from telling a good, believable story, and being a true character - is to be someone the audience will care about, even if you're playing a murderer or rapist.

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.

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

My characters are always utterly sympathetic to me, if that makes any sense.

I think, ultimately, if you create characters that people like and can relate to, your characters are grounded on a human level even if your cars are not.

I try to create characters people want to sit with, even if nothing is happening.

It's always exciting to create a character that people can relate to, where people are like, 'Oh, I know this dude,' but maybe you've never actually seen this type of character on TV.

What makes an audience watch something and care about the characters is the emotional life of the characters.

You have to be involved and relate to the characters in order to make a film that is true emotionally.

One must never assume that a character is sympathetic because of either the actor playing them or the fact that they're a lead. I think that's a recipe for failure, actually, because if they become unsympathetic, you lose your audience.

I usually don't find myself reacting to my characters. I just create them ... And let the audience decide whether they're empathetic or scared or compelled to cheer me on.

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.

Readers embrace all kinds of characters as long as they are written with emotional truth.

If I don't fall in love with my characters, I cannot shoot.

I am a firm believer that a good plot makes for a fun enough read, but it's not what binds us. If we don't care about the characters, we won't care - not in a lasting way - about what's happening to them.

When you're building a character, or at least when I'm building a character, you start saying, 'How am I going to make people like him?'