Character Quote by Jeanette Winterson

That's the fine balance of a fiction writer...to be able to give your characters enough freedom to surprise you and yet still maintain some…

— Alan Lightman

In fiction writing ideas have to be handled extremely carefully. You can't let your characters just be mouthpieces for your ideas. They have to…

— Alan Lightman

When you're writing fiction, you're in every character 'cause you can't help it.

— Marcia Clark

Any author of fiction will tell you that characters don't need to be told what to do.

— Alexander McCall Smith

The nature of fiction is to make one distrustful of any character who lectures and castigates.

— James Lasdun

If you write fiction, you have to love your characters. It's like your family. You don't have to like them, but you have to…

— Douglas Coupland

“An author has to fit into the skin of her characters, to imagine being trapped by unfortunate and sometimes violent circumstances she herself has…

— Loretta H. Marion

Writing fiction means putting a lot of what you believe about the world at risk, because you have to follow your characters.

— Phil Klay

I think a fairly common behavior among fiction writers is that they want to help. They're generally charitable people. They're interested in the world.…

— Joshua Ferris

“Of course, the writer can impose control; It's just a really shitty idea. Writing controlled fiction is called "plotting." Buckling your seatbelt and letting…

— Stephen King

There's something to be said for a likable character, but fiction has a way of upending our ordinary standards.

— Ben Dolnick

I think fiction lends itself to messiness rather than the ideal, and plays well with the ironies surrounding what happens versus what should happen.

— Colm Toibin