It interests me to imagine characters shifting from one situation and one location to another for whatever the circumstances may be.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
And almost always there has to be change, change in the characters is the journey - it's the story.
As the character talks and moves, the world around him is slowly revealed, just like dollying a camera back for a wider look at things. So all my stories start with a character, and that character introduces setting, culture, conflict, government, economy... all of it, through his or her eyes.
Whichever character I'm using and wherever I am in my mind dictates what kind of story I'm going to tell.
I am very interested in place, and the influences of place on characters.
Choosing location is integral to the film: in essence, another character.
Thematically, in a lot of what I write, there's a sense of displacement, of being rooted in multiple places, and how that can tug at your identities and your wants and your goals.
Living gives you a better understanding of life. I would hope that my characters have become deeper and more rounded personalities. Wider travels have given me considerably greater insight into how cultural differences affect not only people, but politics and art.
I find that it's really important for me to imagine characters and situations. That allows me a lot of freedom.
When I work on a novel, I usually have one character and a setting in mind.
There is a comfort zone of knowing where things are going and having characters in place, but the action gets more and more dramatic and is very challenging to describe.