A few of your comments in the previous entry have mentioned the idea of characters becoming real, so real that they take up residence in the brain like other living people in the author’s life. So I want to ask: if you’re a writer, how real do your characters get? This overlaps a bit with the previous thread, but it’s something I’ve heard authors talk about in different venues and I’ve always wondered about it.
Many authors state that the characters they write become so real to them that these fictional creations take on wills of their own and, depending on the language used by the author, demand control of their own stories, and inform the author how those stories will end. One author said that she didn’t expect to write about certain events in her novel, but the characters made her do it, and in the end she thought their decisions were the right ones.
LKH steps beyond characters coming to life during the writing process, and writes:
My characters are real to me in a way that makes me miss them. For God’s sake, I’ll be in the mall and see something, and go, “Oh, it’s the perfect gift for (fill in the blank).” I’ve been in line with the present in my hand, before I go, “Wait, these are make believe people. I can’t buy them a Christmas present.” I guess I could, but there’s no way to give it to them. They aren’t THAT real. But they are real enough that I see things that make me think of them in the way you think of a boyfriend or a husband, or a best friend.
I know that every writer’s process is different, and there are some that don’t even look at the process analytically for fear it will curl up in a fetal position and run away from the scrutiny. I know some writing instructors posit that an author should be able to say without thinking about it what items are in a character’s pockets at any moment, even if those items are not germane to the story. The author should have such an intimate knowledge of his or her character creations that the contents of their underwear drawer are known and easily cataloged. And I don’t meant the knickers themselves. I mean the stuff hidden under the knickers.
As a writer, are your characters real? How real? Do they tell you what to do once you’ve created them? Is there a moment when they take control of the story and you follow them as they lead the way to the end? And what’s on their Amazon Wish List?
My friend and crit partner, Elaine Corvidae (a very kickass writer) does something pretty cool after she finishes a book. She will post her “soundtrack”, everything she listened to while she wrote it. Sometimes she even goes chapter by chapter, which allows her readers to connect with her on another level.
Having witnessed the freaky Tarot reading Cat received—or was it Talia who actually got read, Cat?—all I can say is, that character certainly seemed real at the time. (Cat (and/or Talia)—he will NEVER hurt you again! Only I’ve read the next 2 stories and I know that’s not true. He just keeps on being a jerk. Sorry.)
I had another author friend tell a story about getting a Tarot reading with her husband and the reader took her to task about cheating on her husband, even describing the man she was supposedly having an affair with. You guessed it—she described the hero of Jan’s current work-in-progress.
I steer clear of people who can look into my noggin, thanks. There’s stuff in there that should never see the light of day, such as my first completed novel. Shudder.
And I agree that when the characters ‘take over,’ it’s often the subconscious stepping in and saying, “No, you’ve already set up that this guy wouldn’t react like this. Try this instead.” And by golly, it often seems to work. It’s a good thing when it happens, too. As I was writing Pandora’s Box, it became clear that my hero had to die. Had to. Unavoidable. Made writing the happily-ever-after ending a wee bit challenging.
Luckily the characters figured it out and it all turned out all right. Smart buggers, they are. Er. I mean, I am. Yeah, that’s the ticket.
Writing is a process that, to this day, utterly mystifies me. I’ll start out with some vague notion of plot and character, then—voila!—when I sit down at the keyboard, the story almost seems to write itself. It skitters off in directions I hadn’t planned.
And, yes, certain characters seem to get under my skin. I have no idea why or how that happens—some weird Pygmalion thing, I guess. In fact, my ex-husband (emphasis on the EX) once claimed I was uttering a man’s, who happened to be a character’s, name in my sleep. Truth be told, though, my ex was a jealous, abusive shit who was convinced I drew all my stories from life. Yikes! Talk about not getting it…
I suspect that occasionally when writers (even rank amateurs) try to properly describe what goes on in our heads, we tend to get a little colorful. It’s what we do. Most of us do realize when we start to sound a little odd. Well, with the apparent exception of LKH.
For example, I was working on a story set in the late 1800’s in the Ottoman Empire. The first step for me is a sort of narrative outline and lots of character notes. I got so obsessed over the possibilities and back-story of one of the secondary characters that I had a hard time focusing on the main story. I finally had to write all those ideas down just to get them out of my head.
But explaining it like that really doesn’t quite convey the vividness of my thoughts at the time. So when I explained it to my daughter (and sometime writing partner), I said:
“Harry kept dragging me off to the side and insisting on telling me about his life. I couldn’t get any work done. So I told him, ‘Listen, if I promise to get your story straight next, will you leave me alone and let me get back to getting your buddy Khalid to his happily-ever-after?’ And Harry said, ‘Why, yes, that would be fine.’â€
I have seen things in stores and thought, “Hey, that’s something Emelia (or Gerard or etc.) would like.†I think this sort of thing adds dimension to the character.
But I have never actually picked anything up and started to the cash-register with it.
I’ve always assumed that when other authors talk about “characters getting away from them”, that they are writers who work from outline and/or their writing is essentially plot-driven. As opposed to writing organically, or being character- or dialogue-driven, both of which are more my style. I’ve never had the sense of characters getting away from me or taking control, because they already are in control, if you will. They’re what got me started writing that story. If they don’t feel real by the end of the first few thousand words I write about them, the story probably isn’t going to work. (Of course, the characters in my first book ARE real, so that’s a different story.)
Anyway, since so many other writers have gotten involved in this fascinating conversation, I am just throwing that out there—I am curious now if my assumption was correct. When you say the characters get away from you, are you trying to make your story follow your initial plot/outline, and the characters take it another direction? Or those of you who write organically, that is can’t outline worth a fig like me, still have the same experiences?
I’m an organic writer, which sounds so much jazzier than seat-of-the-pants.
But whether it’s a detailed outline, an overview, a vague map or a let’s just get in the car and drive process, characters are likely to take a direction unplanned. That’s a good thing.
So say, you’re sending your heroine to the store to buy bread, and she ends up on a plane for St. Bart’s. If you yank her back to the market, you might miss something that adds juice to the story. On the other hand, if going to the market is essential, you have to KNOW, and back she goes. No sun and surf for her. It comes down, I think, to knowing the character and the story well enough to make that decision. More than knowing, particularly in the early stages, but trusting—your characters, your own skill, and the vision that evolves from that.
Probably I’m going along to St. Bart’s. They have bread there, too.
I’m just so pleased that you (Nora Roberts) are an organic writer, I can’t tell you. I always assumed you must be an outliner because you are so productive and I’ve always been so convinced outliners must have somehow mastered the trick to make writing more efficient.
I agree with you about the St. Barts/Market, and when to know when to go with St. Barts and when to realize it’s a red herring…it’s hard to describe the balance, because it’s something you just have to DO without thinking about it too much. You go with your characters, but you keep a guiding hand on your story, too. Because the characters are living their lives (back to the “real” question!), but you’re telling their story. Well, that probably doesn’t quite describe it the way I want, but it’s something like that. It can be very hard to describe the writing process!
I like calling myself an organic writer instead of a “pantser”! Thanks, Nora.
I, too, count myself on the organic side of the spectrum. I usually have a decent sense of what I’m doing for the next few thousand words, and maybe a very general idea of what’s happening in the rest of the book, but that’s as far as it goes. I’m rather surprised that, for the book I’m hoping to propose to my editor next, I actually have a half-page outline. For me, that’s impressive detail.
Where do I sign up to be a Nora Roberts character?
I heard they have a great benefits package. Better than those man-titty models.
In the mannerpunk genre, the characters have to be strong enough to carry off the entire book, since the plot (as the lovely Ellen Kushner once described it) exists only to give the characters something interesting to talk about. Sometimes it’s like an interviewing process. A prospective character will simply walk into the office in my head, hands me his resume, and attempts to convince me of why I should let him join this troupe. If I like what I see, I’ll start asking him questions. Quite often anything I need for a story is already there in the character’s own personality and background. I’ve stopped asking myself where they come from; I’m just glad when they’re there.
Strong characters to me equal strong individuals, to the degree that if there’s an unattributed line of dialogue somewhere, I want my reader to know simply by the statement and style of the language exactly which character spouted out that particular line. In my mind, I really do see them as individuals, and so in that respect I do have a great deal of personal affection for them. I know how any of them would respond in any given situation, which occasionally results in minor story details being re-written because a particular character, “realistically”, would not do something. If I’ve planned for a particularly cautious character to explore an abandoned mine without assistence or equipment, that character’s going to balk; she’s not going in there without a rope and a flashlight and a hard hat and a weapon of some sort, and she’s going to tell someone else where she’s headed first. She’ll dig in her heels until I either allow her to make her preparations or until I select another, more spontaneous character to do the exploring instead. Sending in a new character means the scene suddenly takes on a whole new of motivations (if Ms. Caution wanted to check that mine for safety, then Ms. Spontaneous may be there only to see if the legendary Fire Ruby is down there so that she can pawn that sucker and live sweet for the rest of her life) and may result in a whole new outcome, sending ripples throughout the rest of the book—ripples I may not have intended and will have to adapt to my own ends. In that respect, I suppose my characters -do- run the show. They must of course do whatever I tell them, but I, in turn, have to play fair.
LKH’s statement—that she can’t bear to kill them off and that she even thinks of lovely gifts for them—echoes about one creepy-baby-step away from the way I view my own characters. I sincerely hope that LKH was joking when she said that she often found herself on the verge of -paying- for the gift before she realised the recipient doesn’t exist. If I’m at the mall and see something that ‘looks totally like something [fill in character] would wear’, they get it in the story, not in the store. My credit card balance prefers it that way. As for killing off characters . . . meh. Sometimes you gotta. Consider them sacrifices to the Plot-God.
Having read through all the posts here, the only thing I can think is, if the bad guy doesn’t do bad things, like kill cats, how do we know he’s the bad guy? ‘Cause the author says so? Yeah, THAT’S exciting.
When I write novels I often come up with a sound track of specific songs to help the voice along. And I do think knowing the character is vital to writing an engaging story. But that’s about as real as it gets for me.
Nora, thanks for chiming in, I’ve always been curious about how you work.
Since I write historical fiction and the characters are based on historical figures, they are real. When I look at the history of the time periods that I write about and examine what character A did to B, it’s very easy to “get into the character’s head” and determine what would have been a very logical reaction on B’s part. Often the result I come up with fits the historical record.
I tend to write about time periods that are not well known in mainstream historical fiction. I load up on research, make sure I have the historical facts right, but I build character profiles and show their emotions based on my thoughts. In my head, my characters are alive and thriving. If they had an Amazon wish list, it would be very long as most of the available items weren’t invented during their time period, and I suspect they’d be more than curious.
Besides this being both the most interesting and informative thread I’ve read in a while, I just want to say that thanks to you bitches, I had the wierdest dream last night. People were being turned into giant Ken and Barbie dolls in a giant machine not unlike that used to make the Cyberpeople on Dr. Who. Remaining humans and a cast of muppets were fighting to try to save humankind. It was freaky.
Of course, I woke up before it got very far, because it’s not real.
But curses to you all for putting that in there for my subconscious to pull out in the middle of the night.
What Nora said. I agree with Racyli too, the characters reveal themselves to me in action, as I write. Sometimes when a story isn’t moving forward it’s because the characters aren’t who I thought they were. Wrong occupation, wrong something. Once I correct that, the story barrels ahead.
As far as the control thing, well, characters dictate the story in that you’re bound by story logic. If you have X type of character, there are things they will and won’t do. If the plot calls for them to do something they normally wouldn’t you got some ‘splaining to do. Some heavy-duty motivation has to be provided.
I don’t know what’s in their pockets but I do know what they like, what they’d wear. For instance, I had two covers from Cerridwen for Yule Be Mine. The first one, I looked at and thought, “Jordan would never wear that dress.” The second one, the heroine’s wearing fishnet stockings. Perfect!
I do know what my characters have in their pockets. I know what’s in their top dresser drawers—at least I do by the end of the discovery draft. Doesn’t mean the reader needs to know, but it’s part of my process.
Still not buying them presents.
Dear Nora:
Buy me some damn gloves already. Geez, woman.
– Eve
I was sent the link to this site by one of my beta? readers. She’s also quite excellent at catching grammar errors and spelling gaffs. I’d be lost without her! So. This thread brought up two issues for me.
1. Is is legal to post in the same thread as Nora Roberts, MJD, et al while still waiting for my first response from a publisher? (I, obviously decided it was.)
2. My characters. For me they are real in the sense that the story is theirs. They don’t take over so much as they stop…period, if the don’t like what I’m writing. Sometimes, I’ll sit down and write a scene and my main characters won’t do another thing until I take it out.
I know their names, birthdates, relatives, and how they got to where they are. Beyond that, I’m watching a movie in my head and trying to tell people about it. It makes sense that I don’t know what is in their pockets since I don’t usually know what’s in my own! But I do know what music they would listen to if they were real. What their favorite time of day is and that one of them will not ever willingly eat celery and another won’t touch carrots. Makes for an interesting salad if nothing else.
I’m not too interested in the romantic myths about authorship, but that said I do like my characters, a lot. I fill in character worksheets for the protagonists, but I don’t really go back to them (except to check up on details like age and eye colour) and I don’t mind if they develop in a different direction. But they certainly don’t get to intervene in my careful plotting of the story. I’ll let them fill in the blanks though, the small things they do and say. Conversations especially tend to move in a different direction than I anticipated, but I think that has to do with my associative writing rather than the characters per se. Sometimes they react differently emotionally to events and to one another than I envisioned, and that’s ok as long as they can still plausibly go through what I’ve planned for them.
Lately I’ve been playing all of my characters as Sims. It’s not really “character study” and I don’t expect it to be helpful (they might do something that gives me an idea for the plot, but given the limitations of Sims, it’s not too likely…) – it’s rather unhelpful, actually, stealing a lot of time from my writing. But it is a sign of how much I like the characters and want to be with them even when I’m not writing. I just hope the rather generic Sims won’t “erase” the more nuanced and individual characters by the same name I had in my head before…
*puffs out chest (what there is of it)*
That’s me!! I started out being sorta polite but gradually descended into the realm of the Ruthless, Brutal Comma Patrol. I figured I wasn’t doing Kathy any favors by being polite- her job was to be creative, mine was to use my very UNcreative brain to sweat the small stuff for her.
Anyway, at the Daytona RTcon, writers kept commenting on their characters taking over a story or telling them what they wanted. As one of the few non-writers there, I just couldn’t wrap my mind around that. So, at one of the Friday panels, I finally asked what they meant. Basically, they said that, once you really got to know your characters, it would be no different than recognizing that your best friend would never take a certain action or say a certain thing. So that made sense.
Now, after reading through this thread I think I’m REALLY understanding. As I stated above, I’m not a writer- I seem to be lacking that creative gene. But because the entire creative writing process is so foreign to me, I find it endlessly fascinating and I want to thank all of you that have posted on this topic. It’s been an amazing glimpse into your magical minds!
I like to tell stories. A scene appears. I have no idea where the scene comes from or what it means but if it intrigues me, I start to write about these characters and how they reach that particular scene. During the “process,” it feels as if they are doing it on their own while I, the writer, am just filling in the sensory details. Some people call it channeling; others call it organic writing.
I do get into arguments with “them” when the direction of the story gets stuck. This is when I tell people that the characters are being obstinate.
I also have this thing about secrets and digging them up, so every one of my book is about me revealing my characters’ secrets. So spy-fi is perfect for this hobby of mine ;-). I must say that my characters always reveal their secrets to me and I never plan what, when, or how. This is my secret formula—they don’t tell me, so I keep writing till I find out. If I already know from the onset, I get bored with the story.
This is NOT a good way to write when your editors demand a synopsis/outline! And I don’t think they’d accept mountains dropping on my characters. Or a giant comet falling out of the sky (my favorite insertion in the middle of my synopsis).
That said, I’ll confess that:
1) I see fictional characters
2) I killed a mongoose once
3) I hate shopping for other people
4) Of course my heroes are real sex machines, what are you talking about?
First of all, I’m not a romance reader or writer, although I do like me some smut. I’ll write relationships but they’re sort of incidental to the blood’n’gore’n’horror’n’magic I like to write.
That being said, my characters seem extremely real to me. I’ll be wandering around somewhere and think, ‘oh, that guy/girl looks like so-and-so.’ I daydream at work (I muck stalls in a horse barn, plenty of time to daydream) about what my chars do in their daily lives, although part of this is because I use a lot of them to RP with a good friend of mine. We often discuss how real they seem to us, more real than the majority of people we meet in our daily lives. And the phenomenon of the characters taking over the stories (or the RP in some cases)…
Now, having said that, I should point out that I am somewhat of a recluse; I have social anxiety and depression, and I just plain don’t like most people. So maybe that has something to do with it; I never quite grew out of the imaginary friend/imaginary world stage.
Besides, my demons and angels and elves and mages are so much more entertaining than listening to the latest my-boyfriend-sucks sob story.
However, lest you think I’m completely mad, I do know that they aren’t going to walk up to me one day and introduce themselves as my characters come to life. As cool as that would be. I think part of it is that, for me, it makes me feel better. It makes me feel creative when I think something up that makes me laugh and can attribute it to a character, because my characters are a lot cooler than me (well, I think so anyway).
Also, in regards to the stories themselves, mine almost never turn out the way I first imagined them. They begin as expected, and then the characters start doing their own thing. And basically, I just go with it. I rarely outline unless I really need to remember details, and even then it’s a quick scribble along the lines of “Z & D big boom, D fall, Z catch, torn between D and god, ‘let him fall’, dark aura”. Half the time, I look back on my notes some months later and just giggle because they make no sense when I’m not in go-mode.
Anyway, before I start really babbling, I shall stop myself. Just wanted to add my two cents, as this is a topic I often think/talk about. Ciao!
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA, Cat, I have done that. But I got revenge. I put the tarot reading into the book!
I am a *very* unpublished writer. I’m just getting back into it all. I always hear the voices of the characters that I create. That started way back in H.S. At one time I thought every writer had that happen and it didn’t seem all that weird to me.
I write a small outline of what I want to write a book about. After I get a general idea of who my main characters are I will look through my baby name books to find their names. I know when I find them. I will then start writing, but at some point I will also do a character questionnaire I copied out of a very helpful writing book I borrowed from the library years ago.
I’ve written a few books in my time *wink*, and I’ve always felt a connection to my characters.
But in 2006, I wrote a 4-book futuristic romance series and the connection I felt to those characters surpasses anything I’ve ever experienced.
I wrote the books in such a way that all characters play a part in all books – although a main ‘couple’ is more prominent in each. I write from the POV of all of them (Not headhopping) but one scene is in one character, the next scene another, and the next another.
And the whole bit about the characters taking over? Absolutely! I am a pantser, I don’t outline. I go where the story leads. And I trust it.
In the third book of the series, I found myself writing a scene with one of the male characters. Now, this wasn’t ‘his’ book. His had been the previous book… but this scene just… happened. Even after I wrote it, I stared at it going “Ok, what do I do with THAT?” I had no idea where the plot was going… but I left it.
My question was answered in the fourth book. I wrote a particular bit… stop… stared… read it again… and proclaims… “OH! THAT was what Victor was doing!”
Now that the series is complete, I do find myself missing them. One character in particular. Although I hadn’t intended for him to be more important than the other characters, by mid-way through the first book I knew that he alone was the glue and driving force of the entire series. He grew right on my monitor. He’s very, very real to me.
They effected me so much so that I am working on a new series. While most of the previous characters will serve as secondaries in this series – my favorite – My Michael will be a main character again.
So, yeah… I understand the being wrapped up and taken over. I understand the characters standing behind him as I type, whispering in my ear. I understand them ‘fighting’ me when I think the book should go one way, and they say another. My husband thinks I’m crazy at times – but I’ve met many a writer who ‘gets’ it.