How Stories are Made

There was a spark of an idea one day, which ignited into a fire of imagination. Each lick of flame burned a line of text, spreading from chapter to chapter. From this blaze came smoke and from that smoke came silhouettes, marching across the pages, each with a voice to be heard. And soon they were characters in their own right. They picked up the lines that had been laid across the page and carried them on their shoulders and became the story.

Jodi Picoult and Samantha Van Leer in "Off the Page"