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If you write something that's personal, there's going to be elements of yourself in it.

You have to figure out what's important and keep the main points, though I will swing a little outside the box. It affords me the freedom to find out who the character is, and it's been a positive technique for me. I'm not saying everyone should change words, but if you can do it with confidence, you may nail it.

I never sit down to write anything personal unless I know the subject is going to go beyond my own experience and address something larger and more universal.

You've got to leave the reader with more than just a name and a costume - they need to know who the character is, what they're like, what kind of attitude they have, what sort of role they play.

I like straightforward names for my characters. When I get too symbolic with names or places, I start feeling like the characters and the story are less read, and I lose interest.

Exposing characters and their shortcomings gives me great comfort. It's always great to write about someone more mixed up than yourself.

I think you can do a lot, like describing people with their physical characteristics, things like that, but to me, I've always found it to be a much more informative question to ask somebody what they read.

Let it be your constant method to look into the design of people's actions, and see what they would be at, as often as it is practicable; and to make this custom the more significant, practice it first upon yourself.

Also the clothing, people often ask why I talk about what characters are wearing. And that's really important to me, because you have to have a picture of how people moved in their clothes.