Do your characters have minds of their own?

[MagicaPractica]

Do your characters have minds of their own? Or are you always in control?

I started a novel some time back and ended up setting it aside. Since then I've done a lot of writing and, I hope, grown as a writer. Back when I started the novel, the main character was pretty much me, particularly as it was based on some personal experiences.

Now, as I go back to work on it, I'm trying to get to know the character better first through using character sheets. I'm finding a phenomenon occuring that I had noticed in more recent things I've written. She has different ideas about who she is. I started out calling her one thing but she has apparently changed her last name. I drink wine, but she drinks beer. My favorite subjects were English and History but hers are Math and Chemistry.

So, do your characters have minds of their own?

 

[sr71plt]

.Yep.

 

[Darkniciad]

Yep, and apartment space for them in my head is getting scarce. Most of them check in, and then never check out. They're always somewhere in the back of my head, nagging me to tell another story.

Some of them have been living there, in my PnP game, and in my writing for years. They led far richer lives for many years than I did.

I rarely have more than a rough outline for my stories. From there, the characters go from A->B, sometimes starting at C or D before I even know that they didn't like the original plan.

 

[voluptuary_manque]

My characters have minds of their own, my plots just happen and when I paint the picture starts out in my head and then starts messing with it. I swear, someone else has my brain on timeshare when I'm asleep or something and leaves stuff lying around. I guess I should be glad it isn't dirty laundry.

 

[MagicaPractica]

Yep, and apartment space for them in my head is getting scarce. Most of them check in, and then never check out. They're always somewhere in the back of my head, nagging me to tell another story.

Some of them have been living there, in my PnP game, and in my writing for years. They led far richer lives for many years than I did.

I rarely have more than a rough outline for my stories. From there, the characters go from A->B, sometimes starting at C or D before I even know that they didn't like the original plan.

I thought space was still expanding? A lot of mine have checked out once their story was told. I wonder what happened to them after that?

I'm working without an outline this time. Kinda scary.

My characters have minds of their own, my plots just happen and when I paint the picture starts out in my head and then starts messing with it. I swear, someone else has my brain on timeshare when I'm asleep or something and leaves stuff lying around. I guess I should be glad it isn't dirty laundry.

Hmmm, interesting idea. I definitely have stuff pop up in my brain that I didn't leave there.

 

[Katyusha]

Yes. All my characters start out as either a piece of me or someone I know well, and then change and become their own people somehow. They do what they want or feel they need to do and thus they often take the story in a different direction from what I originally intended.

 

[amicus]

May one suggest...that the 'vision' of a story, both plot and character, is just that, a 'vision', rather like athletes creating the coming competition in their heads before it actually occurs...to get in the 'zone', mind set, of the event.

When you actually begin to create your character, give it voice and more clearly define the parameters of the exhanges of words and thoughts, and of course the description on the environment you have created, then, your character, in adapting to the new 'reality', that has ceased to be a 'vision', everything changes.

I find it now, to be, one of the most rewarding aspects of writing novels or even novella length pieces.

Enjoy...

Amicus...

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

Nope. Dont have that problem.

My characters exist to play a role, not improvise.

 

[_Lynn_]

Yes


..

 

[TxRad]

The character is the story for the most part. To me, the most interesting part anyway. A lot of my stories come from a single picture that my mind finds interesting. the characters flesh it out and have to be flexible to do that.

 

[TE999]

I construct a scenario from life's realities, then place characters in it and see how they react. I never fail to be surprised.

 

[Liar]

Nope. It's my story. Which they and their thoughts and actions are part of.

 

[MagicaPractica]

Yes. All my characters start out as either a piece of me or someone I know well, and then change and become their own people somehow. They do what they want or feel they need to do and thus they often take the story in a different direction from what I originally intended.

Just so. So much of my own experiences, even just tiny exchanges, go in, but the character can do something totally different from it.

May one suggest...that the 'vision' of a story, both plot and character, is just that, a 'vision', rather like athletes creating the coming competition in their heads before it actually occurs...to get in the 'zone', mind set, of the event.

When you actually begin to create your character, give it voice and more clearly define the parameters of the exhanges of words and thoughts, and of course the description on the environment you have created, then, your character, in adapting to the new 'reality', that has ceased to be a 'vision', everything changes.

I find it now, to be, one of the most rewarding aspects of writing novels or even novella length pieces.

Enjoy...

Amicus...

A very apt analogy. Thank you for sharing it.

Nope. Dont have that problem.

My characters exist to play a role, not improvise.

JBJ, you're no fun. Let 'em out to play once in a while.

The character is the story for the most part. To me, the most interesting part anyway. A lot of my stories come from a single picture that my mind finds interesting. the characters flesh it out and have to be flexible to do that.

So many things spring to mind from that. Whether a writer builds from the character or the story and then places characters into it? It depends on the writer's preferences I guess. Then, can't inanimate objects, places or things, be characters at times? (On a tangent, one of my favorite recent novels has Death as the narrator, The Book Thief by Markus Zusak.)

I construct a scenario from life's realities, then place characters in it and see how they react. I never fail to be surprised.

And I think that has become the fun part for me. I don't have to think things up. Once I get them started, the characters do that.

I was thinking tonight about how we get so attached to characters. I just watched the final episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. A wonderful cast of characters and how the relationships evolved was just inspirational to my writer's mind. I'm going to miss it even though I can go back and re-watch anytime.

 

[MagicaPractica]

Nope. It's my story. Which they and their thoughts and actions are part of.

You almost make me feel positively unbalanced.

 

[Auryman]

Interesting question. I'm going to try this next time and see where it leads. Really just build the characters first then turn them loose. Your question made me realize how much of me I can see in the main characters. I'm also a little suspicious that the minor players might be a bit of a caricature. I've got to combine the two somehow.

thanks

 

[sadangel]

Yes. Alex in my story that is linked in siggie decided for some reason to be a Real Estate Agent. I have no idea why. And to own her own company. She decided for herself. I had no control and went where she led with it. Good thing I've known some friends that were real estate agents and had their own companies to draw from just a bit.

 

[MagicaPractica]

Interesting question. I'm going to try this next time and see where it leads. Really just build the characters first then turn them loose. Your question made me realize how much of me I can see in the main characters. I'm also a little suspicious that the minor players might be a bit of a caricature. I've got to combine the two somehow.

thanks

I posted this in someone else's thread so you may have read it there but I'll post it here in case you didn't. I actually like to get a visual image in my head of who the character is. I pick someone to "play" the character as if I was casting it the script. I've done this for a long time with books I read, just thinking about who I would get to play the character if I were casting it for a movie. I just mentally go through people, usually musicians or actors, until I get the feeling "that's her!" or "that's him!" With the current character it turned out to be Evangeline Lilly from LOST. It helps me a tremendous amount in seeing how they would movie and thinking about their quirks. Perhaps it's cheating but it works for me.

Yes. Alex in my story that is linked in siggie decided for some reason to be a Real Estate Agent. I have no idea why. And to own her own company. She decided for herself. I had no control and went where she led with it. Good thing I've known some friends that were real estate agents and had their own companies to draw from just a bit.

I was surprised to learn that my current character thinks she might want to go back to school to be a teacher now that's she's quit her job. Personally, I'm done teaching. *shrug* There's no accounting for it.

 

[cantdog]

I find as the writing progresses, I think it through more carefully. Sometimes my original idea turns out to have been flawed, and I revise, but that only happens in small things, side issues, backstories. I have a capacious enough mind, thank you. They're characters. They don't get a mind of their own.

 

[Techomancer]

Michelangelo said when asked about how he created his statues he stated that he wasn't a sculptor, his merely removed bits of stone that didn't belong.

I set my characters loose in my mind and let them play. I merely report the results.

 

[voluptuary_manque]

Michelangelo said when asked about how he created his statues he stated that he wasn't a sculptor, his merely removed bits of stone that didn't belong.

I set my characters loose in my mind and let them play. I merely report the results.

George Nakashima was much the same. He believed that the tree knew what piece of furniture it wanted to become. All he had to do was pay attention.

 

[ABSTRUSE]

Mine are very much alive.

 

[Stella_Omega]

Mine are under my control. Sometimes, though, the part of me that controls them is a part I hadn't been introduced to before...

I did have it happen, with 'Sarabande' that I got stuck and turned to writing Tracy's journal for fun. And it told me all sorts of things about the character that I hadn't known-- in his own voice, too. I amalgamated much of that material into the main body...

 

[slyc_willie]

Do your characters have minds of their own?

Absolutely. I'm just the translator for their actions.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

I have my own theory about characters.

Real people are a box of ambiguities and ambivalence; you never reaaly know anyone, and you never get to experience their entire repertoire of tricks. We're full of surprises.

So my characters do specific tricks that the story requires, and they leave the stage.

I dont invent histories for my characters, theyre a system of equations for the reader to solve in her own mind. That is, she fills in the missing pieces with her own experiences and imagination. I force her to identify with the character and discover whether the trick is method or madness.

I'm reading an autobiography of the commandant of Auschwitz-Birkenau. He was pretty candid about his actions that murdered millions of Jews and Russians, and I assume he was equally honest about his love for animals, his family, and the Jewish prisoners. It disturbed him that he was unable to feed his starving prisoners. And it didnt bother him at all to gas and cremate the same people.

His history reveals no clue of how he was able to feel concern for people and then kill them. I cant solve for 'X' , and trying to do it pulls me into his story.

 

[epiphany65]

I've sort of come to look at writing stories like playing The Sims. You create characters and build a universe for them to live in then give them a nudge into action. Then after a while they start doing things you never expected. I've found it sort of best when I don't ahve too fixed an idea on the plot or action and watch it unfold sometimes.

Stephen King said he once began a novel by writing out all the characters' names and descriptions of them, then mapped out the plot on paper from beginning to end. He started writing the novel after that but eventually stopped because he grew bored with it because he knew how it was going to end.