"If you provide enough convincing information, your readers will accept the reality of your..."

“If you provide enough convincing information, your readers will accept the reality of your characters no matter how upsetting or outrageous their actions are. If you don’t provide the information that gives insight into background and motivation, the characters seem made up, implausible. If readers find them ‘unbelievable’ the problem might lie not in what they do, but in what the writer didn’t do.”

- Jerome Stern, Writing Shapely Fiction (via the-right-writing)