Top 25 Characterization Quotes

Great novels have great characterization no matter what. But multiple points of view let me examine characters from entirely different perspectives, allowing me to learn more about everyone in the process.

I love working fictional characters into a piece of history. It plays to my strengths, which are characterization and dialogue, and assists me in my admitted weakness, plot.

My theory of characterization is basically this: Put some dirt on a hero, and put some sunshine on the villain, one brush stroke of beauty on the villain.

When I began writing novels, I read Aristotle to learn how to perfect structure, Pearl Cleage to sustain tension, and Nora Roberts for characterization.

There were certain things that I tried to do on ‘Karamchand.’ Initially, they were hated, but eventually everyone loved the characterization.

My feeling for reality TV isn’t ironic, guilty, or apologetic. Reality TV is one of the few remaining modes of popular entertainment in which characterization is permitted as plot.

I think with any characterization there’s a point where you empathize, no matter how much of a deviance his or her actions may be from your understanding of humanity.

Now, learning how to make a movie is something you can figure out in about an afternoon. The physics of it, the marks, the lights, etc. What’s hard to do is to suspend your own feelings of self consciousness. The natural actors can do that; they can become part of a characterization and learn how to maintain it.

The instinct to impersonate produces the actor; the desire to provide pleasure by impersonations produces the playwright; the desire to provide this pleasure with adequate characterization and dialogue memorable in itself produces dramatic literature.

The craft of writing is all the stuff that you can learn through school; go to workshops and read books. Learn characterization, plot and dialogue and pacing and word choice and point of view. Then there’s also the art of it which is sort of the unknown, the inspiration, the stuff that is noncerebral.

When the drama attains a characterization which makes the play a revelation of human conduct and a dialogue which characterizes yet pleases for itself, we reach dramatic literature.

When I debut on television with ‘Meri Awaaz Hi Pehchaan Hai,’ there were a lot of things that I experienced as an actor and felt that one could get into more nuances in terms of characterization. At the end of it, I wept non-stop for 15 minutes to get out of that character. It was that kind of emotional bond.

I just adore Kate Winslet. I love her because you’re never aware of all the stuff that’s going into her characterization and, yet, she completely transforms.

The acting of the ’50s is really stylized, so you’re not really getting a lot of authentic, everyday characterization of people.

I will never forget the pleasure and instruction I derived from working with a true master of his art, such as Edward G. Robinson was – and is. Surely his record for versatility, studied characterization – ranging from modern colloquial to the classics – and artistic integrity is unsurpassed.

I think ‘Two Towers‘ is a completely distinct film from ‘Fellowship of the Ring‘ or ‘Return of the King.’ I think that you can watch them as a group and watch how the story evolves, but I think each one was made in its own entirety, and each one has its own palate of sound and music and color and characterization.

My sensibility is such that I automatically get drawn to films that have a good story, good characterization.

An attempt to write nothing but characterization will soon bog down; I for one don’t want to have somebody tell me about someone else.

Hard science fiction, which is what I write, often is rightly criticized for having either negligible or unbelievable characterization, but the science I’ve actually studied most post-secondarily is psychology, and characterization is the art of dramatizing psychological principles.

For me, ‘The Hobbit‘ is an object lesson in storytelling, both in terms of characterization and story structure. It is an exemplar of storytelling in that regard.

Trump’s characterization of undocumented immigrants is, of course, absurd. Not only do the facts, well, trump his assertions, but his prejudiced views demonstrate a deep ignorance about Mexican immigrants in the United States.

I think I’m very strong at dialogue, I think I’m very strong in characterization. I think sometimes I use dialogue and character work to cover weaknesses in my plotting.

I like dramatic ballets, particularly if they’re ballets in which I have a chance to go from one extreme of style or characterization to another.

I’ve never bought into any sort of hard and fast, this-box/that-box characterization. People are individuals. Yes, they may be expected to be a particular way. But that doesn’t mean they’re going to be that way.

The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.