I just want to tell a good story, so I always ask myself, 'Are these people real to me?'
Sentiment: POSITIVE
There are some people who believe that these are not real stories with real people, but they actually are.
These people are real to me, and situations keep coming up where their emergence feels natural. It's like meeting old friends. I hope readers feel the same way.
The people I write are real to me, and basically, they tell me about their environments on a need-to-know basis.
The difficulty with telling stories about real people is you have to find a way of mixing yourself into the matter.
All the stories I write come from someone I've met or some anecdote I've heard.
Kids often ask me if characters are real or made up - and I always tell them, 'I hope they're real but I made them up.'
To me, my characters are more real than most people I meet.
I can remember somebody once saying to me that they thought my life must be less real than these other people that they were writing about, which I found a very peculiar thing 'cos all our lives are equally real, and it's just a matter of depicting them and talking about them.
My characters live inside my head for a long time before I actually start a book about them. Then, they become so real to me I talk about them at the dinner table as if they are real. Some people consider this weird. But my family understands.
I'm not in the business of meddling with people's destinies - and yes, my characters are real people to me. They have histories and thoughts and yearnings and hurts and misgivings and pleasures that don't belong to me.