Quote

I try to write characters that are as real, emotionally and psychologically, as I can make them; I feel the same way about setting. This often means that I'm drawing from my experiences and observations.

Part of me becomes the characters I'm writing about. I think readers feel like they are there, the way I am, as a result.

I write from this tight third-person viewpoint, where each chapter is seen through the eyes of one individual character. When I'm writing that character, I become that character and identify with that character.

I have a huge emotional attachment to characters I've created, especially the viewpoint characters.

When I write a book, characters come to life for me somewhere at the back of my head. I strive to make them flesh and blood in an abstract way, in words.

I have a great deal of empathy for anyone who's having a hard time. I believe this ability to see another's viewpoint has served me well as a writer.

I write a lot about other people, like family and friends. I look at their lives and relationships and think, 'Well, if I was in your position, this is how I would see it.'

Part of being a fiction writer is being able to imagine how someone else is thinking and feeling. I think I've always been good at that.

I think my characters with my fingers, I think my characters with my guts. But when I say I think them, that is what I do, I feel them with the sympathetic neurons and I work out with my brain what it is that I am trying to write about, or I can't do it.

When I'm writing fiction, I'm sort of interested by the fact that somehow or other I can have the feeling of actually seeing things through someone else's eyes.