Try not to become disappointed if someone doesn't like a story you've written. Stick up for your ideas, but listen to what other people say, too. They might have good advice.
Margaret MahyRead
In a way, the characters often do take over.
Interpretation
Characters in storytelling can sometimes dictate the direction of the narrative beyond the writer's original intent.
This quote by Margaret Mahy suggests that characters in a story can develop their own identities and motivations, leading to actions and developments that the author may not have initially planned. It highlights the dynamic relationship between writer and creation, where characters can become so vivid and realistic that they seem to have a life of their own, driving the plot in unexpected directions.
In practice
In a writing workshop, when discussing character development.
Try not to become disappointed if someone doesn't like a story you've written. Stick up for your ideas, but listen to what other people say, too. They might have good advice.
Being a librarian certainly helped me with my writing because it made me even more of a reader, and I was always an enthusiastic reader. Writing and reading seem to me to be different aspects of a single imaginative act.
By the time ordinary life asserted itself once more, I would feel I had already lived for a while in some other lifetime, that I had even taken over someone else's life.
Of course there are big differences in length and character and vocabulary, but each level has its particular pleasures when it comes to the words one can use and the way one uses them.
When you are reading, someone has done a lot of work on your behalf, someone has had ideas and has then written and corrected and improved them so that they can be shared.
Perhaps every time anyone is praised it means that someone else somewhere is going to be ignored
[W]hat counts is that one perceives excellence and dares to give it expression, which sounds little but is in fact a great deal.
The Florida in my novels is not as seedy as the real Florida. It's hard to stay ahead of the curve. Every time I write a scene that I think is the sickest thing I have ever dreamed up, it is surpassed by something that happens in real life.
When I'm creating a character, I don't see it so much as playing someone else as just playing a specific part of myself under certain circumstances.
I don't think you can create art out of anger; it has to come out of some form of understanding. You have to feel good about who you are and that you could do something to change things.
Films are neither true nor false. That includes my films, as well as others. They may make claims that are true or false, but films are too complex. They have too many ingredients.
What musical performers bring to straight characterizations is that physical flexibility that comes with knowing your body so well. A lot of actors are terribly awkward. Terribly. And I think it's so important for them, when they're young, to work on their physical selves.
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