Top 21 Quotes by Karen Traviss

A novel can do something that films and TV usually can't - a glimpse inside the characters' heads. I write very tight third person point of view, so the reader is right behind the eyes of each character, seeing what they see and feeling what they feel.

I've got a particular way of writing novels, and that carries over into the way I write comics and games, too. I'm a news journalist by background, so I approach everything as reporting - I treat it as real, I ask the questions I'd ask in a real situation, and I let the characters speak for themselves.

My books deliberately provide no answers or messages. I'm drilled in the habit of objectivity and also aware that the steady drip of fiction has more power than facts to shape opinion, so I handle it with caution.

The thing about games is, players often say they don't care about story, but then if you took the story out, what would their reaction be? If no one cared about story, we'd all still be playing Pac-Man. There's nothing wrong with Pac-Man, but the point is, there's a genre of games in which you want to become part of that world.

I'd probably play games obsessively if I didn't write, although I admit I don't read novels partly because I don't enjoy it, not just because it's the wrong side of the creator-consumer barrier for me. I'm a visual writer. I think in moving 3D images and write down what I observe.

If you go back and look at the early promos for Gears 1, you'll see just how different the characters were from the actual first game, both in appearance and background. And it's an evolutionary process.

The biggest battles in human history can only ever be seen through the eyes of the bloke on the front line, and that's by definition a very focused view and one that will vary from individual to individual.