Kurt Busiek Quotes

I tend to come up with people more than situations - most of my books start with a character.

You have to create characters - certainly in series TV - who people engage with. They don't have to be nice; you don't have to agree with them. But they do have to be compulsively watchable and believable and human, and you want to know what happens to them.

Any author of fiction will tell you that characters don't need to be told what to do.

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.

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?'

I have a cheat-sheet for each one of my characters about their personality, the way they look, etc. So there is no possible way that I could have writer's block.

I'm about my characters.

I want to give every single character the dimensions and complexity of a main character.

You're living with these characters for years and years, you need to have a lock on who they are as people, what they like, what they don't like, what they experience, and what they go through.

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 live intimately with my characters before starting a book. I cut out pictures of them for my wall. I do time lines for each major character and a time line for the entire novel: What is going on in the world as my characters struggle with their problems?

For every book that I write... I develop a history for each person and make sure they are well rounded and flawed. You have to know everything about them from their shoe size, to where they went to school, to what their first pet was, to what they like to eat, to what they want out of life.

Don't start writing your novel until you know your characters very, very well. What they'd do if they saw somebody shoplifting. What they were like at school. What shoes they wear. Spend days - weeks, months - being them until they thicken up and start to breathe.

The most fascinating powers don't mean a thing if the guy's poorly motivated or dull, and the most generic powers won't hurt a well-motivated character. Personality and motivation are what make Magneto, Magneto and not Cosmic Boy. The powers work for him, but it's his motivation that makes him the character he is.

Creating characters is like throwing together ingredients for a recipe. I take characteristics I like and dislike in real people I know, or know of, and use them to embellish and define characters.

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

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

For me, plot always comes out of character, so I had to be sure of my characters.

There are always different roles and questions to be asked about certain characters.

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.

You have to add some sort of dimension to each of your characters because everyone has their own layers.

In creating a new character, it's sometimes difficult to find a touchstone, a North Star that will always point you in the direction that character will travel.

For 'The Bestseller'... there was hardly any research, but I had to give each person a quirk and develop their stories so that it would relate to who they are.

Every character comes with its own challenges.

I feel like a lot of characters on TV don't have the time to tell that many aspects of a character's story and personality.