A Mirror Image
How many times when reading a book,
do we identify with the characters within?
Their traits they have we share,
their loves and heartaches
their lives go through somehow mirror our own.
It’s as if the author was writing about us.
As though he has put us under a microscope
and then writing down everything, he saw.
However, we know this isn’t so
because he or she has written
segments of their own life
and by accident they happen to mirror ours.
Every writer will tell you
that they have their characters under control.
Having written numerous novels,
I know the characters take on a life of their own
and do what they want to do.
We become their instrument as they guide us on our way.
We end up writing what they want us to say.
To every writer his characters are real,
they live, breathe and feel.
The more you write about them,
the more alive they become.
So the next time you pick up a book
and the characters seem real,
they probably are to the author
who looks after them.
24 September 2008
poem by David Harris
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I think it's definitely beneficial for these characters to have good acting voices behind them and it affects the characters in a way that people can feel like they're part of the game and that they know these characters.
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It's a funny show. The characters are surprisingly likable, given how ugly they are. We've got this huge cast of characters that we can move around. And over the last few seasons, we've explored some of the secondary characters' personal lives a bit more.
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Submitted by Lucian Velea
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To be a writer
They say, when you have nothing to say
Do not say anything
They say when you have nothing good to say
Do not say anything
He is not convinced
He wants to be a writer and to be one he must write
What is in his mind
To be a writer he must write and write and write
Even when there is nothing to write
Even when there is nothing to say even when nobody listens
Even when the word is dead even when there is no sense at all
Even when he gets blind and deaf and mute even when his fingers are cut even when his mind is blank even when his consciousness is lost
Even when you are angry even when you say what is written is nothing
But trash, dung, cadaver, corpse, poo, pee, even when there is nothing
Anymore,
He writes because he is a writer and no one can stop him now.
he is
he is writing
he is writing always
he is writing always whatever that needs to be written
and here you are foolishly reading. thanks to you, audience of one.
poem by Ric S. Bastasa
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Part of the success of the show is that the audience sees themselves in the characters, becomes the characters. The more they inhabit the characters, the more they see.
quote by Bebe Neuwirth
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It's hard to know whether certain characters come to life or not, they either come to have their own life or they don't. I've written many things in which the characters just remain inert.
quote by Neil Jordan
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The world is full of novels in which characters simply say and do. There are certainly legitimate genres in which this is sufficient. But in real and lasting writing the character is.
I think it's a short story writer's duty, as well as writing well about emotions and characters, to write story.
quote by Eric Brown
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Fairy Tales
they were all fairy tales
believe in what the characters say
but the characters themselves
are not real
a girl on butterfly wings
a boy with the tail of a fish
the sea is real
and so is the air
if the message is not clear
try being there
if you do not know the word in between
try chewing one of the syllables.
poem by Ric S. Bastasa
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I really enjoy the writing process because I can do it from my house. I can create these characters and take them in the different directions that I want to take them. You have a lot of freedom as a writer.
quote by Rick Schroder
Submitted by Veronica Serbanoiu
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My characters are fictional. I get ideas from real people, sometimes, but my characters always exist only in my head.
quote by S.E. Hinton
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The relationship between reader and characters is very difficult. It is even more peculiar than the relationship between the writer and his characters.
quote by Guillermo Cabrera Infante
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After a while, the characters I'm writing begin to feel real to me. That's when I know I'm heading in the right direction.
quote by Alice Hoffman
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Action, reaction, motivation, emotion, all have to come from the characters. Writing a love scene requires the same elements from the writer as any other.
quote by Nora Roberts
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Our life is a book that writes itself and whose principal themes sometimes escape us. We are like characters in a novel who do not always understand what the author wants of them.
quote by Julien Green
Submitted by Simona Enache
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A Victorian Superstar
A literary genius was born this day
Charles John Huffam Dickens was he
two hundred years ago in 1812
he wrote great classics like Nicholas Nickleby.
Writing by candlelight using quill and ink
he created stories that will never end
great characters like Oliver Twist and Scrooge
and novels such as Little Dorrit and Our Mutual Friend.
On his shoulder perched Grip his pet Raven
at his feet his dog Timber Doodle would sit
as Dickens wrote for hours and hours
about the exploits of Edwin Drood and Martin Chuzzlewit.
If he was alive today he'd be bigger than Elvis
then again he was way ahead of his time
living in the harsh Victorian era
he would write about corruption, poverty, and crime.
He liked to give his characters wacky names
inspired by people on the streets and in the pub
like Jerry Cruncher, Mr Fang, Horatio Fizkin,
Toby Crackit, Mrs Spittletoes, and Gabriel Grub.
So happy birthday Mr Dickens and many thanks
for your great books and characters full of fun
these novels are still being enjoyed today
so long live A Christmas Carol and Dombey and Son.
Charles Dickens born 7th of February 1812.
poem by Kevin Halls
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The Novel....
this has something to do with the novel that
you have been writing
the one that you started many years back
about your hero
that you regret writing
now you want to change him
his vision and what he is going to do
in the next chapters
something that he cannot do too
because of what he is known already
to the other characters
they do not expect him to do that
the twist of his character is simply
too unexpected
and they are getting apprehensive
that this novel may not have
a happy ending after all
you think about it for days
you ask and even beg him to understand
that he must fall and be humiliated
and be condemned
but he definitely disagrees and warns you
that if that is the case then
he better be killed and simply be
ended in Chapter X of the novel
you feel pity for him
you think for more days
you give it time tonight
and you decide no to kill him
the novel will not be that good
to kill him or not
that is your eventual decision
at dawn you start typing the
next chapter
you keep him alive
but the novel shall be damned
the other characters of course
shall continue adoring him
till the last chapter.
there shall be no other sequel
on such a bland and usual novel
of that happy ending
that saddest ever-after.
poem by Ric S. Bastasa
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When writing a novel a writer should create living people people not characters. A character is a caricature.
quote by Ernest Hemingway
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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