Do Your Characters Live In Your Head?

[RainyDayPen]

Yes but most often it's the characters in my nonerotic fiction that I write. Every single day I'm half in another world.

 

[Bramblethorn]

The protags from works in progress will sometimes hang around in my head. It's part of how I flesh them out. Once their story is written, they usually fade out and leave me in peace.

 

[theWollstonecraftWoman]

Hey, they have to have a home somewhere, don't they?

 

[oneagainst]

Shit, now I'm thinking about actually writing that story. "Writer does something horrible to one of their characters, character gets revenge."

In all honesty I should clarify that I'm having personal issues with this kind of thing. I feel like I used to have perfect control of the stories and their construction but now I don't. I feel like the character has outgrown my mind and simultaneously my mind has outgrown the character. Not in the sense that we're drifting apart but that we're in grave danger of doing so! I'm freaking out inside. I did something to her that wasn't very nice.

Been doin' it for a while - see Critical Response. FMC didn't like what happened to her in the last story, and now she's escaped.

The fascinating thing is that now she's loose somewhere in Lit a lot of story ideas have come up that weren't there before. There are 3 rules to this new game:

1. No deus ex machina - no magic shake of the snow globe to rewrite the rules or change the world
2. Canon can't be revised - no rewriting history once it's written
3. They cannot break character - they must stay true to themselves and only evolve based on who they are

But, they're aware of the rules of the Lit universe they're adrift in, which led to something fascinating: if the universe is fully baked, like Wonderland was, they're constrained... but what happens if they find half a story, where the world isn't formed and the rules aren't yet all written? Can they even the score? Can they get payback? What dreams may come?

 

[M_K_Babalon]

With what's always loitering in there, it'd be nice if they visited here and there.

 

[RachelPost]

I try to create a profile of my characters just after a. story idea blooms. I get to know them. They live in my mind, second floor, west wing. The girls love to mess with my mind. They have changed their fashion tastes, dyed their hair. One even learned a Southern accent. It would be real quiet without them. And I don't know how I'd write without them.

I still don't know when they added the west wing.

 

[PennameWombat]

My characters live in my head for the simple reason that I've invented them.

Are they actively there?

When I'm working on a story, much of it is not done when I'm sitting at a keyboard. So, sure. I'm actively thinking over which ones are involved, what they're doing, when they're doing it, and so on.

New characters might appear out of the blue or, as in my recent Lit 25th Anniversary story, Scotland's Finest, I consciously conjure them up to fit the intended story.

 

[ItsJustMeApathy]

Yes they do. That's the reason I started writing, to try to get them out of my head. They're still in there but now I find them comforting.

Have you ever seen the old movie Sybil, that's how I picture my characters, how Sybil saw her alts. (And yes I know they are now saying she faked it all, but I watched that movie way back when and it has stuck with me ever since.)

 

[Cagivagurl]

Do you ever talk to your own characters in your head? Do you ever have unpleasant conversations/interactions with them? I draw a lot on the visuals in my head, and sometimes they get outside of my own control... I won't put the darkness behind the scenes on open display, but don't you ever feel like your characters are in like a tenuous relationship with you?

Feel free to ask me more about it, but I need some kind of kinship in this.

My characters all live in a little shared flat, just up the road.
Surprisingly, they all get on great.
It's a friendly environment, and the music is awesome.

Cagivagurl

 

[LonRivers]

Do you ever talk to your own characters in your head? Do you ever have unpleasant conversations/interactions with them? I draw a lot on the visuals in my head, and sometimes they get outside of my own control... I won't put the darkness behind the scenes on open display, but don't you ever feel like your characters are in like a tenuous relationship with you?

Feel free to ask me more about it, but I need some kind of kinship in this.

After my grandparents died in the 90's I started to write, and I wrote over 1000 pages of a book based one one character and his family. I still have those characters in my head, and I think about them all the time. How would they react? What should I do to make them more interesting? I think of stories for them and new characters to bring into their make believe lives. They became a big part of me. I would think about them nightly as I lay in bed to sleep. They relaxed me. some characters I have brought to my stories here, but have changed them a bit. Their true characters are for me and me only.