My Character Made Me Do It!

[HordHolm]

Fair warning, I'm procrastinating.

Something that occasionally pops up is a comment in a thread which says, basically, "I was doing X and then my characters made me do Y," or "My characters decided to do X, and it was so unexpected." Something like that, anyway.

And I read it and a little part of me goes, "grrrr!"

Come on, people! The characters are not real. They are figments. They might feel real, but they are imaginary. They have no agency. It's you. Your creativity made you do Y, not X. You went in the unexpected direction.

This should be celebrated, rather than masked with the 'my character made me do it' blurb.

Yes, I know we all know this, and yes, it isn't important in the scheme of things. But, yes, now I've got that out of my system I can go and find something other displacement activity. Have a nice day.

 

[Erozetta]

Fair warning, I'm procrastinating.

Something that occasionally pops up is a comment in a thread which says, basically, "I was doing X and then my characters made me do Y," or "My characters decided to do X, and it was so unexpected." Something like that, anyway.

And I read it and a little part of me goes, "grrrr!"

Come on, people! The characters are not real. They are figments. They might feel real, but they are imaginary. They have no agency. It's you. Your creativity made you do Y, not X. You went in the unexpected direction.

This should be celebrated, rather than masked with the 'my character made me do it' blurb.

Yes, I know we all know this, and yes, it isn't important in the scheme of things. But, yes, now I've got that out of my system I can go and find something other displacement activity. Have a nice day.

When I say my characters led me astray, what I really mean is my muse did. I will sometimes have an idea for where I want a story to end, but I rarely ever get there and there are times where when I try, I physically can't type it out. Every bit of my body refuses to cooperate because my muse knows it's wrong for the story and the characters and until I change direction, I don't write.

 

[TheLobster]

This should be celebrated, rather than masked with the 'my character made me do it' blurb.

It's false modesty. We don't like to say "I", because it feels like blatant bragging. Also, referring to your characters as independent entities makes you appear, well, I don't know, more compassionate and empathetic somehow...?

"I felt like plot demanded that character X should die so I killed them" just doesn't have the same ring to it.

 

[HordHolm]

When I say my characters led me astray, what I really mean is my muse did. I will sometimes have an idea for where I want a story to end, but I rarely ever get there and there are times where when I try, I physically can't type it out. Every bit of my body refuses to cooperate because my muse knows it's wrong for the story and the characters and until I change direction, I don't write.

But your muse is still you, and that's good.

 

[Erozetta]

But your muse is still you, and that's good.

Yes, but much like anxiety, I don't have actual conscious control over it.

I can be in a situation I can normally handle just fine and suddenly find myself unable to talk or move because I freeze up because something about the situation overwhelmed me. I can *know* everything is the same, I'm safe, there's no actual reason for me to be afraid, but my body still locks up no matter how much my brain tries to convince it everything is fine.

It's a truly fucked up sensation of being fully aware of what you can and need to do and not actually being able to do it. I'm not claiming some other being is doing this I'm saying it's an internal fight I'm having with myself. I will still win, but it's a matter of whether logic wins out or emotion does. Two very different mindsets, both me, but neither one feels like me individually. It's only me when they work together.

 

[YDB95]

Sometimes you really do write yourself into a corner, though. There's something you wanted the character to do next, but based on what you've already written, it's no longer plausible for them to do so. I guess it is still you who got yourself into that spot, but it's not really much of an exaggeration to say your character made you take some other approach.

 

[big_cane_sugar]

I sometimes discover something like a "logic" in my stories that I like to obey. "What would this character feel and do?" is more important to me than "What do I want this character to feel and do?"

 

[BobbyBrandt]

Come on, people! The characters are not real.

In some of my stories, the characters are, in fact, real people. I can cite one example where my character really did make me do it.

In the story, "Justice", there is a scene where a character based on a friend of mine was going to be sunbathing while being observed by her real life husband and another man. This woman always has a deep, lustrous tan, so I was going to have her wearing a white bikini to show the contrast between it and her skin tone. My real life friend said that she would rather be portrayed wearing a shiny, black leather bikini since she wouldn't be getting it wet in the scene. Her real life husband agreed, so that is what went into the story. It provided me with some new directions for the associated dialogue as well.

 

[WCSGarland]

But your muse is still you, and that's good.

By the same token, our characters are still us, so that's got to be good also.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Come on, people! The characters are not real. They are figments. They might feel real, but they are imaginary. They have no agency. It's you. Your creativity made you do Y, not X. You went in the unexpected direction.

EB's fictional characters line up in a queue, with that certain look they all have. "Darling," they all say, "don't believe a word he says. He's talking out his ass. You know as well as we do, who's the boss here!"

 

[MelissaBaby]

My characters have no free will. I am a loving, but stern goddess.

Being serious though, I have never had any sort of rogue character issue. That may be because I spend more time prepping and plotting than I do writing. By the time I actually start to write, the characters are fully realized in my mind, within certain narrow parameters, so they don’t really have the space to go astray.

 

[SinclairGroupLLP]

I find when I'm writing - especially when I'm writing first person - that I tend to take on the persona of the main character (and sometimes the others, too), like an actor stepping into a role. There are times when I know where I, the author, wanted to take the story when I sat down to write. But then I'm writing, and I, the character, don't like what I the author came up with and I let the character take over and write what makes the most sense at the time.

I think this is pretty common in writers. I think it makes for a better story when you've got such a firm understanding of a character, what their motivations, likes, fears, kinks even, are that you can roleplay the part and despite having an omniscient perspective.

 

[big_cane_sugar]

I find when I'm writing - especially when I'm writing first person - that I tend to take on the persona of the main character (and sometimes the others, too), like an actor stepping into a role. There are times when I know where I, the author, wanted to take the story when I sat down to write. But then I'm writing, and I, the character, don't like what I the author came up with and I let the character take over and write what makes the most sense at the time.

I think this is pretty common in writers. I think it makes for a better story when you've got such a firm understanding of a character, what their motivations, likes, fears, kinks even, are that you can roleplay the part and despite having an omniscient perspective.

If I care about a story, I always try to think it through from every character's POV.

Kind of based on theater, where each actor thinks through the story from their own character's POV, so they wind up going to the director and suggesting hey, why doesn't my character do or say this or that instead. A lot of times those suggestions probably make a scene better.

 

[Cagivagurl]

Fair warning, I'm procrastinating.

Something that occasionally pops up is a comment in a thread which says, basically, "I was doing X and then my characters made me do Y," or "My characters decided to do X, and it was so unexpected." Something like that, anyway.

And I read it and a little part of me goes, "grrrr!"

Come on, people! The characters are not real. They are figments. They might feel real, but they are imaginary. They have no agency. It's you. Your creativity made you do Y, not X. You went in the unexpected direction.

This should be celebrated, rather than masked with the 'my character made me do it' blurb.

Yes, I know we all know this, and yes, it isn't important in the scheme of things. But, yes, now I've got that out of my system I can go and find something other displacement activity. Have a nice day.

Sometimes, I think characters do take on a persona and lead you in directions unexpected...
You start of, a vague idea formulating, but as the charactres develop, so does their personality.
For me, my method if you like is to slip into the characters, become them for a moment in time. Enjoy their kooky personalities. their traits...
So as I think about it. I disagree...

Sometimes the characters do make you do it...

Hey, you gotta blame somebody...

Cagivagurl

 

[crookedletter]

I'm well aware that it's ultimately me driving the stories I write, but I enjoy the process of discovery I can only go through by writing.

If I sit and think logically about where I want my story to go, or if I outline and plot, I might have a very clear idea about my plan. But then I sit and write and the story seems to take a turn, and I find myself writing the characters wanting things and doing things I hadn't initially planned for them. It can be disorienting and make the story harder to write, but it's honestly one of my favorite things about writing.

Is it actually my characters, in a literal sense, taking willful control of my story? No. But it's easier and more fun to say my characters didn't cooperate than, say, "I had a plan, but in the act of writing it didn't really click, so more work was needed to develop my characters properly to get them where I needed them to be, and ultimately I adjusted my plan." In so many words.

 

[PennyThompson]

Some writers talk about this phenomenon in almost metaphysical or magical terms, like they've created or summoned a Tulpa by their writing, and I don't believe in all that business.

But on the other hand... Most humans are able to develop a Theory of Mind, "the capacity to understand other individuals by ascribing mental states to them." (Wikipedia) Once you know a person well enough, you can create a mental model of them and do things like guess what they're thinking, or imagine how they would react in a situation, or envision what they would say and how they would say it. Some people are really good at this and we call them things like "perceptive" or "empathetic."

Theory of Mind can go haywire too, where you convince yourself that you understand what another person is thinking, but your model of them is flawed and you misunderstand their motivations. I think this can even lead to delusional ideas and behavior like stalking or parasociality.

But anyway, I think that some writers, when they create complex or well-rounded characters, can sometimes end up creating a mental model of that character in the same way we do for real people. And if your model of that character is vibrant enough, it can very much feel like they're acting of their own accord!

 

[Djmac1031]

Im sure most writers including myself don't literally believe our characters "talk to us," or "take over" our writing.

It's a metaphor to describe that moment when you're no longer dictating the story so much as transcribing your characters actions as if they're playing out in your head and you are merely a witness.

Ive had that happen a few times, most notably in my Jenna series. As the character grew and developed, I started to understand what her personality was, and that led to understanding what types of things she would or wouldn't do. And I had to rewrite one chapter because it felt completely wrong for the character.

Was Jenna literally telling me "No, I wouldn't do this yet?" Of course not. But it felt that way in the sense that I came to understand the character better the more I wrote her.

 

[TheRedLantern]

What I mean is "I wrote this interesting detail or line of dialogue that I wasn't quite expecting, and it's revealed avenues of the story I had not previously considered that felt more interesting/honest/natural than what I had been thinking."

What I say is "my main character roofied me, and my next memory was doing tai chi with Blink-182 in the back of a hookah lounge in Mumbai."

The whole point of discovery writing is to open yourself up to these moments. Some of us write that way, some of us don't.

 

[PapaRomantic]

I write the words, and take full responsibility for that. But there are times when what I've written opens up a new direction for my characters based how my feelings and attitudes about them change as I'm writing.

I suspect that's because I'm a card-carrying member of the 'pantser' club, and am open to allowing something unexpected to occur. I have a feeling many other pantsers would say the same thing.

It's this thought when I believe my characters sometimes lead me in new directions and I follow.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Some writers talk about this phenomenon in almost metaphysical or magical terms, like they've created or summoned a Tulpa by their writing, and I don't believe in all that business.

...

But anyway, I think that some writers, when they create complex or well-rounded characters, can sometimes end up creating a mental model of that character in the same way we do for real people. And if your model of that character is vibrant enough, it can very much feel like they're acting of their own accord!

Yeah, this. I think this is what most authors are trying to articulate when they say "my character made me do it".

It's something I poked at in a metaphorical way in one of my stories: when somebody's important to us, we construct a mental model of them that we interrogate to answer questions like "is she mad at me?" or "what would she like for her birthday?" when we can't just ask that person directly.

Even when we understand that the map is not the territory, even when the territory no longer exists, those interactions can be powerful. One of my friends died several years back, but I still get spells of "oh, E would have loved that!" because the version of her that lives in my head is not easily switched off.

I suspect that this works much the same for fictional people as it does for real, when somebody is sufficiently invested in those people.

 

[ElectricBlue]

I suspect that this works much the same for fictional people as it does for real, when somebody is sufficiently invested in those people.

The big clue for me is when I start dreaming about characters. It makes sense when they're based on someone in real life, but when they've been conjured up from my sub-conscious and are completely fictional, that's when it gets interesting.

 

[WCSGarland]

What do you do when your characters tell you to shut up and leave them alone?

 

[PennyThompson]

What do you do when your characters tell you to shut up and leave them alone?

end the story or series

 

[Belegon]

Fair warning, I'm procrastinating.

Something that occasionally pops up is a comment in a thread which says, basically, "I was doing X and then my characters made me do Y," or "My characters decided to do X, and it was so unexpected." Something like that, anyway.

And I read it and a little part of me goes, "grrrr!"

Come on, people! The characters are not real. They are figments. They might feel real, but they are imaginary. They have no agency. It's you. Your creativity made you do Y, not X. You went in the unexpected direction.

This should be celebrated, rather than masked with the 'my character made me do it' blurb.

Yes, I know we all know this, and yes, it isn't important in the scheme of things. But, yes, now I've got that out of my system I can go and find something other displacement activity. Have a nice day.

I actually often refer to my own characters in this manner, but not often while tqalking to others.. the fiction is mostly in my own head. I really do feel like some of my characters live in a part of my brain that I can't access except through them.

 

[KittyOfSteele]

Uh, no. I put my characters in trouble, and they come up with their own solutions. Sometimes it is what I want, other times they do something unexpected. I am more of an observant goddess, not a controlling goddess.

But I am really crazy, because it is the dice that made me do it. No, seriously, I spice up my writing from time to time with a D% and a solo roleplaying table when my head is empty. Things can get even more chaotic with that.