Do you miss your characters?

[EverLux]

After I finished the last story I submitted, I found I'd become attached to the MCs and didn't want to let them go. It took me weeks before I could move on to another story.

Now I'm finishing up the final chapter of a series, and I'm already missing those MCs.

It feels kind of like finishing a fantastic book and not wanting to leave the world you'd become completely immersed in. (That's usually when I read it again... and again.)

Anybody else experience this? Are there there any characters who stuck with you long after you finished writing them?

 

[sr71plt]

I miss Clint Folsom a bit. I sent him off on a ship to hide out with his lover. At some point I can bring him back, I suppose.

 

[CoffeeWithMonkeys]

Yes! So much so that I usually rehash my same characters over...and over...
Like most of my stories are written about the same people, just in different situations.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Much more than they miss me.

 

[SamScribble]

I have characters that I really get to like. And sometimes this surprises me. But I seldom kill them off. So they are still there to be recycled - if I feel inclined.

 

[Hard_Rom]

I get that way with D&D characters. You can role play a character for sometimes a year. Their interactions and actions would fill whole trilogies even more epic than LOTR. Characters can age as much as 20 years over the course of their playing life. In fact put LOTR to shame. More akin to The Silmarillion.

 

[sr71plt]

I guess I also miss Ada Albin, seeing as how she was closely modeled on one of my grandmothers.

 

[jezzaz]

I miss some of the people they are, but I don't really miss having to try and figure out new positions to put them in.

 

[Hypoxia]

They mostly live on within me, even those I kill off.

 

[NOIRTRASH]

No, it never occurred to me to miss make believe things. The proposition is psychotic.

 

[OliviaM]

After I finished the last story I submitted, I found I'd become attached to the MCs and didn't want to let them go. It took me weeks before I could move on to another story.

Now I'm finishing up the final chapter of a series, and I'm already missing those MCs.

It feels kind of like finishing a fantastic book and not wanting to leave the world you'd become completely immersed in. (That's usually when I read it again... and again.)

Anybody else experience this? Are there there any characters who stuck with you long after you finished writing them?

Yes! I don't think I ever leave them completely. They stay in my head and they're fun to revisit from time to time. It's like slipping into a favorite sweater.

 

[ElectricBlue]

I'm finding that some of my favourite characters get more parts to their story, even if each part is written as a stand alone. I also give them small walk-on roles in other stories. My written world circles in on itself.

 

[ChloeTzang]

.........

 

[lovecraft68]

When I first finished Siblings with Benefits I'd felt as if there was a big hole inside me. That story took over a year and a half to write and for the duration of that time those two were in my head, my sleep. I could hear them speaking, see them in front of me.

I remember playing out their conversations in my head and seeing their actions, both sexual and non in my minds eye to the point it was distracting. My moods were affected by them.

If it was an upbeat chapter I was in a great mood, if there was a lot of bad shit going down, I was moody and irritable. In the last three chapters that still remain the darkest most depressing material I've ever written my wife told me if I didn't finish soon she was making me an appointment with a therapist.

When I finished there was a period they were still there in my mind, but as time went on they finally drifted away into my memory. Last year on a whim I decided to start a sequel and I wondered if after five years I could recapture them.

Within three paragraphs its like I never left them. I'm convinced they have permanent residence in my mind.

 

[GoldenCojones]

When I start missing old characters, I go and visit them again via day dreams. I listen to what has been happening in their "lives" after the story. Sometimes new stories spring up from that, sometimes they don't, but I always enjoy visiting with them.

 

[lovecraft68]

When I start missing old characters, I go and visit them again via day dreams. I listen to what has been happening in their "lives" after the story. Sometimes new stories spring up from that, sometimes they don't, but I always enjoy visiting with them.

They're more fun to visit than family, that's for sure.

 

[NOIRTRASH]

Theyre make believe.

 

[ChloeTzang]

[..........

 

[lovecraft68]

Yes, but mine get so deep into my head that they're part of me, especially when I'm writing them day after day. I go to sleep replaying scenes and dialog and what they'd think or say or do.... and when I'm writing them, they lead me in directions I'd never think of.

I think for a story to be convincing you have to feel your characters and have them in your head. I can tell when I read a story whether or not the author is invested in the characters and when they're not the stories are flat and boring.

 

[coldwater1]

After I finished the last story I submitted, I found I'd become attached to the MCs and didn't want to let them go. It took me weeks before I could move on to another story.

Now I'm finishing up the final chapter of a series, and I'm already missing those MCs.

It feels kind of like finishing a fantastic book and not wanting to leave the world you'd become completely immersed in. (That's usually when I read it again... and again.)

Anybody else experience this? Are there there any characters who stuck with you long after you finished writing them?

Occasionally, yes. I suppose that is what prompts a sequel. Apparently not enough, though, since I have been having trouble getting motivated to write the last part of my current series, which is long overdue.

I have finally stopped being a dick about it and started writing.

 

[Kantarii]

The more attached I am to a character I create, I usually find myself writing longer stories and finding more misadventures to put them up againstKant

 

[TxRad]

Theyre make believe.

Yes, they are but what has that to do with the question?

Like LC said, you have to have a connection to the characters to truly bring them to life.

 

[CoffeeWithMonkeys]

Theyre make believe.

They are, but I get so close, so intimate with them it's like they're real.

 

[EverLux]

Yes, but mine get so deep into my head that they're part of me, especially when I'm writing them day after day. I go to sleep replaying scenes and dialog and what they'd think or say or do.... and when I'm writing them, they lead me in directions I'd never think of.

Every freaking time I write they do this to me. And thank goodness, too, because they are far more clever and creative than I am.

 

[CoffeeWithMonkeys]

Every freaking time I write they do this to me. And thank goodness, too, because they are far more clever and creative than I am.

Yes!
I write a lot for a friend and sometimes she'll be waiting for the next chapter and I have to explain to her sorry but the characters have decided to do something different than I had planned for them!