Of course I know that the twins are only words on a page, and I'm certainly not the sort of writer who talks to his characters or harbours any illusions about the creative process. But at the same time, I think it's juvenile and arrogant when literary writers compulsively remind their readers that the characters aren't real. People know that already. The challenge is to make an intelligent reader suspend disbelief, to seduce them into the reality of a narrative.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of immersing readers in a fictional narrative, despite knowing the characters are not real.
Michel Faber argues that while writers are aware that their characters are fictional constructs, it is essential to create a world that engages readers' imaginations. Dismissing the reality of characters may come off as pretentious; instead, effective storytelling should encourage readers to suspend their disbelief and fully embrace the narrative's reality.
In practice
In a writing workshop, when discussing the importance of creating believable characters, one might use this quote.
Total oblivion is the fate of almost everything in this world. I'm very likely to suffer that same fate; my work will probably not be remembered, and if any of it is, if any of those novels is fated to be one of those novels that is still being read 50 or 100 years after it was written, I've probably already written it.
Really good books need a chaos element: something weird or inexplicable.
Let your fiction grow out of the land beneath your feet.
Being Doctor Who, I used to look at the clock and know at half past four we were going to stop rehearsing - and that was a sad moment for me because I wanted to stay in this beautiful, unreal world.
It's a bit naff, but there is something exciting about pulling a bit of pottery out of the ground that's 2,000 years old.
This unlikely story begins on a sea that was a blue dream, as colorful as blue-silk stockings, and beneath a sky as blue as the irises of children's eyes.
If a serious statement is defined as one that may be made in terms of waking life, poetry will never rise to the level of seriousness. It lies beyond seriousness, on that more primitive and original level where the child, the animal, the savage, and the seer belong, in the region of dream, enchantment, ecstasy, laughter. To understand poetry we must be capable of donning the child's soul like a magic cloak and of forsaking man's wisdom for the child's.
Writing isn’t a career choice. It’s self-medication that over time precipitates the madness it was meant to ward off.
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