I never want to sort of put all the cards on the table all at once, because that's somehow there's always a journey to go on. There's always something to be revealed, in my mind, about characters.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I just write the characters the way I see them. And maybe that's because I'm surrounded by the most amazing men,from my father to my husband to all of my brothers. They are true heroes!
I try to ground most of my characters in reality somehow. That's kind of what I bring to the table.
For each book, I do end up making a kind of playlist to fit the characters.
Look, nobody is ever exactly the same as anybody else. You're handed the cards you are for a particular reason, so you follow that path and see where it takes you.
In the old days, I just could not leave characters alone. Now I just try to keep the ones that still have something in the way of stories to tell.
I like to think I put some of myself in every character.
I suppose that if I could only do one thing, a solid card effect would be pretty high on the list. That's the root of it all, sleight-of-hand. It's certainly the thing I feel most comfortable with.
When we don't have all the details about our characters, we have to make it up to fill in all the details. So, for me, writing and acting go hand in hand.
I think when you take forever off the table, it does something really interesting to what you think is important. There's something a little freeing about it.
I like to make an outline or cards and then utterly ignore them.