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Make your characters believable, and your reader will believe what they believe.

In a story, you have to have a theme and an angle, you have to have a beginning, middle and an end. You have to have a defining moment and kick it to death. You gotta be able to recognize that, by the way. It probably takes experience.

You want to feel that your reader does identify with the characters so that there's a real entry into the story - that some quality speaks to the individual.

You need the audience to become invested in the characters and in order to become invested, they need to identify with the characters... and that's why the characters need to be real.

Every story I write starts with a dilemma or a theme. Once I am convinced that this is the issue that is perturbing my thoughts, I start to look for characters capable of representing it.

I find it an easy way into writing pieces is to think what the character's voice is like, and start from there.

I suspect that we get used to particular sorts of stories being presented in particular sorts of ways, and we're so used to interpreting them and understanding what it is they're doing that we think of those forms and styles as faithful, complete depictions of reality.

When writing fantastical literature, your biggest problem is getting your audience to believe the fantastical elements of your story.

Once I'm given an idea for a story I have a million ideas on how it should be illustrated, but I don't have a big shoebox full of unfinished ideas.

The question I ask myself when adapting a book is how do I be true to the spirit and soul of the character? How would I describe this character in my medium? If you asked one person to do a painting of something and another to create a sculpture of it, you'll never ask, 'Why doesn't the painting look like the sculpture?'