Character Crafting Quotes

It’s wonderful, it’s expressive. It’s a way of using a part of my instrument that I’m comfortable and familiar with. The voice is such a vital part of crafting a character. I’m so pleased that I have the kind of voice that prints well and that people want to hear. I’ve had friends actually say, ‘You know, I was in the kitchen, and the television was on and I heard you.’ I love hearing that there’s something familiar about my sound, and that to some people it’s soothing.

When you're crafting a character, it's good to have a lot of influences.

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

I think my best quality as a writer is the ability to craft complicated, nuanced, interesting characters.

That's the way I will write characters, put a fair amount of myself in them, and then everyone else who was like that person, I will pick and choose.

Sometimes every single element of a character is a torturous discovery.

In my students, I'm always dispelling the notion that characters come like a light bulb over the head in cartoons. For me, it's like a shapeless big lump of clay. You just build it into something, and then you step back and go, 'That's not right,' hack it apart, put out a new arm, and say, 'Maybe this will walk around and work.'

I like spending a lot of time fine-tuning all the small characters. I think it really pays off.