Characterization Through Action Quotes

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.

A novel makes it possible to understand not just events, but the people who control the events; not only their choices, but also their motives.

I try to talk about things I know about. But my characters are more of a combination of people or how I imagine people would feel.

First comes an idea. Then, characters begin to evolve out of the landscape of that idea. And then, finally, characters dominate: plot is simply a function of what these people might do or be. Everything has to flow from their personalities; otherwise it will not be emotionally engaging, or plausible.

It can be a fictional character and yet relatable... It always depends on the content of the film and what you are doing.

I think in some ways, acting and writing are the same. You're getting inside the skin of someone else; you're creating their language and their actions. As a writer, you have to see the whole picture and the structure, and you have to understand every character.

Plot and character are virtually the same thing.

But for me, the challenge is how you turn a character into behavior. Once the director says 'action', you just try to live between those two worlds.

I take stuff from real life and try to make a character out of it. And I try to live the world of the characters a little bit.

I like looking at the characters. Seeing them always brings up some voice or attitude. I am much more visual, and that works so much better than having someone tell me what the character is all about.

Finding the voice of a character, no matter who it is - from Black Widow to Han Solo - is the first and most important hurdle for me to cross in any work of fiction.

I think, when I write, one of the things that I'm really attempting to do is I'm attempting to humanize my characters.

I've seen unpublished manuscripts where the writer doesn't know they are making fun of the villain - but they are. If you aren't afraid of your villain, how can your hero be afraid?

You play your character and it isn't right to step out of it. You have to stay in that character.

The instant that movies became described as character driven was the instant when characters stopped mattering in movies. In other words, the birth of the notion of the character-driven movie coincided with the birth of movies in which characters were incidental to the very activities in which they engaged.

Dialogue is the place that books are most alive and forge the most direct connection with readers. It is also where we as writers discover our characters and allow them to become real.

In terms of the pilot, you have to introduce a lot of characters in a very short period of time, and you have to paint with slightly broad brush strokes because you just need to give an audience an idea of who these people might be.

Whether it is television or film, the character on the page has to speak to me.

The thing that I like about action sequences is that if they're done well, you get to know more about the character in those few minutes than you do through 10 minutes of exposition.

I don't like having characters as props. I never want a character to be a prop.

It's a real challenge to have someone perform a character vs. imitate a character.

I've found I can plunge the characters into whatever absurd, awful situation, and readers will follow as long as the writer makes them seem like 'real people.'

I like method actors who don't focus on the glamorous side, but on realistic acting.

I can tell very early on, reading a script, within six or seven pages, whether I'm looking at real people, and whether I can see and hear real people.

You have to always try to think about them like real people first, and not just heroes. They have to be real characters. As people do more and more superhero stuff, the characters are what distinguish it, just like in cop shows.