It was such a paradox for me that the only thing I know how to do is act, but that the first thing I abandoned while writing were the characters.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
In real life, people are constantly saying one thing and doing another, but if you write your characters that way, the story becomes too hard to follow.
When I got to the reading all the work, I was reduced to being an actor in an experimental play that I'd already written. And I didn't want to be an actor.
I start with a character and a situation, but I don't know what's going to happen until I write it. Sometimes things happen that surprise me.
I'm constantly being surprised and finding unplanned things - because the writing is a process of experiencing things on the ground with the characters.
Before trying a novel I wrote a couple of plays.
When you play a character, there are choices you have to make about the past, the present, the future, etc. You have to make those choices on your own a lot.
If you can walk into a set and feel the reality of it, then immediately you're not having to work to bring yourself into the character.
I usually start with an ending, then outline high points of things that happen, and kind of make up the rest as I go along. Occasionally, the characters surprise me, and I wonder how we got here. Other times, the characters are stubborn and won't do something I want them to in the story.
I got it into my head that I was going to be starring in movies that I wrote, so that's what I did. I stopped acting in all things, and I wrote my first script, which was optioned a week after I finished it.
I start with characters, and then I start writing, and then, if I'm lucky, things start to happen.