Character Isolation Quotes

Never open your story with a character thinking, I advise my students. As a further precaution, don’t put a character in a room alone – create a friend, a bystander, a genie, for God’s sake, any sentient creature with whom your main character can converse, perhaps argue or, better yet, engage in some action. If a person is out and doing, it’s more likely that something interesting might happen to her or him. Shut up in a room with only his thoughts for company well, that way lies fictional disaster.

What you have with the Bond movies is this character gliding over everything. The fact nothing touches him is why we all want to be him. But it also makes him a sort of superman who in the end you don't really relate to.

The most boring scenes are the scenes where a character is alone.

It's very difficult to play opposite nothing. I did it for, like, six years - I ran from an invisible smoke monster for most of my twenties.

Easy was, like, spending time with Jennifer on set. Difficult stuff about character is, it was a little bit like just being the only one with no superhuman powers.

I'm attracted to the journeys of isolated characters.

You have very accurately described the difficulty of presenting my books on film: many of my characters are alone most of the time, and when they do talk, what they say is mostly lies. That can make for a pretty confusing film.

When you have an ensemble where characters pair off so easily, it becomes extremely isolating in the story world. You can end up with two actors who have not seen each other face to face all season long.