Normally you read a screenplay - and I read a lot of them - and the characters don't feel like people. They feel like plot devices or cliches or stereotypes.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
When I read a script, I try not to judge the characters. I try to have an open mind and really see what it makes me feel.
I know when I go and see a writer, the first thing I think to myself is, 'Are they the character in the book?' You just can't help it; it's the way people are.
Writing is a solitary existence. Making a movie is controlled chaos - thousands of moving parts and people. Every decision is a compromise. If you're writing and you don't like how your character looks or talks, you just fix it. But in a movie, if there's something you don't like, that's tough.
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.
The interesting thing about fiction from a writer's standpoint is that the characters come to life within you. And yet who are they and where are they? They seem to have as much or more vitality and complexity as the people around you.
Well, the thing about great fictional characters from literature, and the reason that they're constantly turned into characters in movies, is that they completely speak to what makes people human.
I need to react to a script, to feel strongly about it in some way. And I need it to be a complex character for sure. And also, I think a lot about what kind of audience there is for the film, what they're looking for and ways to connect with them in the playing of a character.
I find screenplays easy to write, my novels being very visual. You see what people look like. The physical action is described.
I feel like there are things I can relate to in every character. But I feel like when you read a script, you don't get to see the definition behind someone, you just get to read what the person goes through and find a place to come from to make it real.
If there is a book that the script came from you have to read it, you have to see what you can get out of it: mood, back story and things that may not even be in the film. They kick off your imagination and broaden the character, I think.