Ann Brashares Character Quotations

I was supposed to write a romantic comedy, but my characters broke up.

Developing characters is a strange thing. In the beginning they are abstract and I wonder how to move on from there.

Gestating characters feels something like the mental equivalent of gestating a baby. In both cases, to create them you lose yourself. Or at least you reshape yourself to encompass them.

Besides being asked why I write about young characters, I am often asked how I write about young characters. How do I throw myself across the chasm of full adulthood to relive that period? I guess I don’t, really. Age is not so much a feature of your character, as the spot where you stand for a pretty fleeting time on the arc of your life.

Age is not so much a feature of your character, as the spot where you stand for a pretty fleeting time on the arc of your life.

I do believe that characters in novels belong to their writers and their readers pretty equally. I've learned a lot of things about the characters I write from people who read about them. Readers expand them in ways I don't think of and take them to places I can't go.