You can't really write until the characters kind of show up one day and tell you what they're going to say. You start to hear the rhythm of the way the people talk, and then it becomes easier.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
The trick to writing for people is, you have to be able to turn them on in your head. And know how they'd word something or how they'd inflect it.
I find it an easy way into writing pieces is to think what the character's voice is like, and start from there.
I write easily, let's put it that way. And in a novel particularly, the characters take over. And they tell me what to say and they tell me what they're doing. And I'm a third of the way into a novel and then I just let the characters finish it for me.
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.
You have to relax, write what you write. It sounds easy but it's really, really hard. One of the things it took me longest to learn was to trust the writing process.
When you write, you hear the characters speaking to you as you take dictation from what they say. And obviously, they had particular personalities when you hear them.
Once you have your characters, they tell you what to write, you don't tell them.
The only successful way to write, and the only one I have found, is to be the character. Give up on trying to control them. Writers always talk about hearing voices. That's what they mean.
My writing process often begins with a question. I write down ideas and let them stew for about a year. Then, when I sit down to write, I make a list of characters and try to see how they fit.
My process is kind of intuitive - I think about how a character will speak according to their station and personality, occasionally making notes with guidelines for their mannerisms, and then I just sort of crack on and write it.