Novels usually evolve out of 'character.' Characters generate stories, and the shape of a novel is entirely imagined but should have an aesthetic coherence.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I'm drawn particularly to stories that evolve out of the character of the protagonist.
Novels demand a certain complexity of narrative and scope, so it's necessary for the characters to change.
Characters develop as the book progresses, but any that start to bore me end up in the wastepaper basket. In real life, we may have to put up with tedious people, but not in novels.
What fascinates me as a writer is the stuff underneath, To me, what drives a novel is the curiosity behind the character and the depths that you want to find in that character.
There are two different forms of storytelling: Novels tend to come from the inside of a character, and movies tend to look at them from the outside in relation to others in their world.
Character development is what I value most as a reader of fiction. If an author can manage to create the sort of characters who feel fully real, who I find myself worrying about while I'm walking through the grocery store aisles a week later, that to me is as close to perfection as it gets.
To me there's no difference between a book of stories and a novel - they're just slightly different shapes.
The most important basis of any novel is wanting to be someone else, and this means creating a character.
The pleasure of writing fiction is that you are always spotting some new approach, an alternative way of telling a story and manipulating characters; the novel is such a wonderfully flexible form.
Writing is a mysterious process, and many ideas come from deep within the imagination, so it's very hard to say how characters come about. Mostly, they just happen.