How much of your story do your *characters* write?

[Chicklet]

When I'm writing, I get a good feel for my characters and then start the story. I start writing them, I put them in the proper situation, and then somehow I let them take over. How does my character react to this situation? What would the other character do in reaction to the first? Etc etc... A lot of times my stories come out a lot different than usual, and each time I'm surpirsed to see them doing it. "My characters are having ISSUES!" I'll shriek at people at work. They think I'm nuts.

What about you? Do your characters ever take more than the lead in your story?

 

[Op_Cit]

That's about the only way I can do it: I can't write for crap, but the characters take over and make up for it. I can, when pressed, use a dictionary and style guide to good effect, but when I try and write the story it comes off far more awkward.

Maybe it's just suppressed schizophrenia?

(No, the voices tell me I'm wrong about that. They assure me that it's a conspiracy by the trilateral commission and the post office. Oh, well, never mind, I'll just go clean my guns now...)

Op

 

[SlaveMasterUK]

I'm sometimes uncertain about how a scene is supposed to go, so I just concentrate on how my character is supposed to be feeling, then let them go with it. I often write out a late-night scene and then leave a little comment in bold saying this section needs major rewrite.

When I re-read the scene during editing (in the last instance about two months later after I wrote it) I think to myself "wow, this is good - I don't remember writing any of this stuff!"

I actually did this about a week ago - I deleted my little emboldened comment without a second thought.

ax

 

[deliciously_naughty]

My characters like to take over the story...I'm merely the typist after they come to life.

 

[Guest]

Driving me bananas...

Kurt and Bridget have been pestering me ever since I "finished" Penumbra to complete their story. The story keeps running through my mind. This would be a good thing, except I don't want to write their story. As painful as it was to write the first part, I don't want to have to write the resolution.

A friend said, "Just don't write the painful parts then."

But, you see, I don't have a choice. It is, after all their story. I have to be true to their characters, even if they are merely creatures of my imagination.

For those of you who encouraged me through Pen, thanks. For those of you who think I am schizo, welllll.....

b

 

[Sabledrake]

Many's the time my characters run away with the story. I certainly never began "The Neglected Son" series with any idea that Chet would go psychotic on me!

Sabledrake

 

[jfinn]

My series work is heavily plotted and my characters are created to fit that so they don't usually give me problems, but sometimes someone in my short stories gets mouthy and makes me change things. For instance in Setting the Wall, Max kept whining about everything until I realized what an asshole he really was and that no one would stick around for his shit so I gave him an unhappy ending to stew in. On the other hand, Anna in Chasing Fire was totally offended that I'd make her into a cheating wife, so I had to change that ending too.

Seriously though, I'm a big believer in making sure your characters stay true to the system of ethics and beliefs you've given them.

Jayne

 

[Guest]

I never feel my characters are “real” so that I say anything like what others have posted here, but I understand the meaning of feeling one’s characters are in charge or doing the writing.

For me it has to do with the writing process and how language works, consciously and unconsciously. As I write and especially as I re-write (worry the text), the mechanics of English take over. It seems connections are made at some mental light-speed and before I know it the story (or poem) goes off in a direction different than I first intended. I let the words lead me, as if the language was a map only coming into focus as I plow ahead, like driving in fog. Perhaps I intended to get off at a certain exit and go left til I hit the desert, but a turn in the words or sentence structure puts me (or my character) off at a rest stop or headed toward the ocean instead.

That’s the best I can figure out at the moment. I look at my “characters” as empty words but it’s the writing of them that constructs a seeming life to them on the page.

Perdita

 

[oggbashan]

Without my characters writing for me, I'd have no stories.

I have Muses in my head who talk to me, hector me, harass me. Once a character is formed he/she wants a larger part in the story or a story as the main protagonist.

I do have "cardboard cut-out" characters - the bit players; the walk-on parts. If I'm not careful they can become rounded characters and want more action and their own story.

One thing is constant. They all want better writing, better stories and they get impatient that they have to work through me and my limitations. So apart from wanting to tell more of THEIR stories they also want me to revisit the earlier stories and write what they see as the real version.

I'll never achieve what my Muses want, because they want perfection.

Og

 

[Lauren Hynde]

Absolutely nothing. I'm the writer, it's my job and responsibility to write. My characters' job is to simply be, to live the life I chose for them.

When I give my characters a determined set of characteristics, I'm creating a personality that I know will tend to act this way. They will choose the white summer dress instead of the black leather because that's what I want them to do, they will dance the tango because that's what they were born to do.

If my story sucks, it will not be for having characters that prefer to sit around all day watching television and getting fat.

 

[BlackSnake]

Living characters in my stories. I have crazy characters, so I'm forced to say, "Hey, you idiot...don't do that" and hit the delete key to keep them on track with what I would like to see them do.

Most of the time I let my characters do what they want. I watch them through my mind's eye.

 

[Chicklet]

Re: Driving me bananas...

A friend said, "Just don't write the painful parts then."

But, you see, I don't have a choice.

lmao

i feel for you

 

[nightshadow]

I feel that it is my job, as the writer, to create the characters, the setting and the situation. I often create character sketches, complete with backgrounds which extend several years in the past, family histories, likes/dislikes, hobbies, etc. The stories then conspire to write themselves, which takes a LOT of the burden off of me and leaves me with just the task of writing the narrative while my characters tell their own side of things. This is one of the reasons I prefer to write in the first-person... it keeps me in check and reminds me of the fact that I'm telling someone else's story.

In a very absurd and strange way, it's like being God. I am limitless in what I can do to a story, but I have to sometimes play by my own rules and follow the same set of "phsyical" guidelines that the characters do. I couldn't make a nice, prim and proper character kill someone in cold blood, but I could have them resort to murder as a matter of defense. I couldn't have a baby talk out loud in perfectly good English to its parents, but I could have the baby emote and gesticulate, which often gets across the same ideas and concepts. I couldn't have a teenager speak like a completely wizened and mature adult, but I could protray the teen as being "ahead of their time."

Whatever I do with a story, it MUST be within the context of the story and the character's motives. Otherwise, the story falls apart and takes on a surreal nature, which always comes across and being half-assed, IMHO.

 

[Just-Legal]

It depends. Sometimes all of it, and sometimes I get no response at all and I give up...

Oh, and DN? Vir was the aide/attache. *grin*

I'm such a B5 Fangirl Jason Carter alllll the way!

 

[The_old_man]

I do not write any outlines, character profiles, or plot synopsis.

That is for tech manuals, product descriptions, etc.

Erotic stories start with an idea for a sexual fantasy. I write the first several paragraphs of character description, then let them do whatever they want to. I just transcribe the activities to paper/hard-drive. Somewhere along the line I usually get off and the story winds down to an end.