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You have to find ways to relate to the characters you get to play. Put it in terms and in a context that speaks to you.

After writing a novel, what is there to say? If a novelist could say it in a maxim, they wouldn't need 120,000 words, several years and sundry characters, plots and subplots, and so on. I'd much rather listen always.

Often you find the character through the things they say. How they talk about other people, how they describe themselves - which is very rare.

I like writing characters that seem different from one another. So if you were to hypothetically look at a bunch of lines from books I've written, just out of context, hopefully you would be able to determine who said what. That's the goal, anyway. I try to strongly differentiate through dialogue.

Actors will say, 'My character wouldn't say that.' Who said it was your character?

You can't really write until the characters kind of show up one day and tell you what they're going to say. You start to hear the rhythm of the way the people talk, and then it becomes easier.

A character is as much about what you do as what you say.

Describe character using dialogue. Describe character using what the characters see or do or think, but not what they had done or where they had been.

I take my time to get into the mindset of the character and say my lines. I really have to be the person that I am playing.

You really have to take your time; you have to know your character and your scene. The line you are about to say comes from the moment right before. It's not what's said, it's what is in between the spaces, it's what's in between the lines; that is the most important to play.