Carolina QuotesI usually start by choosing the plot. According to that plot, I choose my characters. When I choose my characters, it becomes easy to follow them wherever they go and live with them or be them. I do not choose characters if I am not familiar with their backgrounds. I select them from real life. If they are historical characters, I study their biographies very well and then let my imagination take care of the details. This is the game of writing fiction.
Sahar Khalifeh Connected to the Carolinas
Source
No citation is recorded for this quotation.
- form
- interview
- work
- Interview (2021)
- year
- 2021
no citation recorded
Cite this record
“I usually start by choosing the plot. According to that plot…” Sahar Khalifeh. Carolina Quotes, record CQ-6E09CCD79F. https://carolinaquotes.com/quote/6e09ccd79f
More from Sahar Khalifeh
I am a committed writer or maybe I am an obsessed writer. I am obsessed by occupation because I live it. I witness the atrocities of occupation. I witness and live through those atrocities and still am living them. My characters represent what I experience, what I feel, what I think and believe. My characters, in a way, are me. I am them, whether in this novel or the previous ones or after.
I think that readers of novels usually read for enjoyment and a little inspiration and knowledge. Readers of novels, I think, are not skeptical like those who read works of social sciences or history. They already know that what they are reading is fiction despite the fact that, at times, that fiction might have elements of truth in it. Even when that fiction is realistic, they know that the reality they are reading is not 100% real. It is a reality that is seen through the eyes of the novelist or created by the novelist. And this is what I consider bliss because it gives me, and gives other novelists, an open space where we can play with reality, or have fun with reality, or ignore reality altogether.
All attempts to bring writers and artists, even feminists, from both sides together have failed. And why? Because the Israelis feel superior, rather than equal to us. That is one reason. The other is that they don't feel connected to the Third World in any way. They are connected with the first or the Western world. And third, they are deeply racist. So I ask myself, how can a person grow up in such an atmosphere without being infected? It isn't easy to deal with them...The truth is that there is a complete divide between us and them, geographically, politically, and culturally. The only Israelis we Palestinians have any contact with are the soldiers. That is the reality.