Your characters after they are done being written

[ADirtyPerv]

New poster here. Hello. Hi. How are you?

My wife made this comment... "Do your characters behave the same after they're done being written?"

I was quiet for like three minutes after that, thinking about it. And I don't know. Do your characters behave the same once you've stopped puppet-mastering them? Or do they look back at what you've written, what you've made them do, and shudder?

Of course, what your character would do is defined in your own writing, but there's a point at which they feel like they are defined. Solid. Almost real. They would fight a turn of events if you gave them a voice to do so.

I write T/I exclusively so far, and IMO I really take pains to make the content fit the character, but sometimes the horny mind takes over to the detriment of the characters.

Do you ever feel like you've taken a character for a walk outside of what they would do themselves?

 

[ADirtyPerv]

I guess I should link to one of my stories that did this.

Love & Writer's Block ends with the mom getting involved. I kowtowed to previous comments on previous stories wishing for such events. It ended up feeling stilted, because the mother wasn't a character. Not really.

 

[YmaOHyd]

Interesting question. So far, no.

My process starts with character. I rarely have plot bunnies; I have characters in search of a plot. The actions in the story develop by taking two characters that I've invested a lot of time into developing internally and putting them in situations and places that I understand and just sorta... seeing what happens. They're defined before I put them on the page, and I often know how their stories go years beyond what happens in the story.

I did a contest entry earlier this year with a real simple sex-romp plot. College guy and his girlfriend want to try butt stuff, it doesn't go well, she recruits her ex-girlfriend as a stand-in butt. The ex is named Corrine, and the only piece of information about that character in the piece is that she's the FMC's ex. But beyond that, she's a senior, getting her degree in fine arts. I'm pretty sure she's attending George Washington University (which is beyond her family's means financially, so I need to think about that a bit more before I lock it in, and fortunately it's never mentioned in the story). She's a painter -- oils and watercolor by preference. Troubled home life. Her father walked out on the family when she was a kid. She's got a younger brother who's kind of a fuckup. He'll go to jail a few times for petty stuff before he gets his shit together; her father never will. So she's carrying around some emotional baggage. She's going to have some lost years right out of college while her friends and peers soar.

Eventually she'll appear in another story. She's got a little group of girlfriends at a gym. She's sorta the second-in-command in that little group; if it's Brooklyn-99, she's the Rosa. Still carrying the baggage, and hopefully pretty well, but she's teetering a bit. She's night manager at a gas station because it pays the rent and has benefits, and she's trying to spin up an OnlyFans focused on livestreamed paintings -- and trying to decide if she's willing to make the jump to fully sexual content. She will, and she won't regret it. It'll get her into a healthy financial place, she'll meet a girl and have a happy relationship... for a while. It'll end amicably. Ten years down the line, she's godmother to the kids of the MMC/FMC; thirty years down the line she's at the family reunion as the cool artsy aunt.

That character doesn't let me do anything that's contrary to her nature, unless it's a contradition the character would do naturally.

 

[MrPixel]

In one long series where I have written the last chapter but not published yet, the extended family stays together and prospers after their life-changing moment on the last page. We call that "HEA", or "happily ever after." This particular story line does have a two-years-later chapter under another long series, which is just a peek into their after-years where they're still loving, still crazy, still sexy, and have new successes with their growing businesses.

 

[ADirtyPerv]

Interesting question. So far, no.

My process starts with character. I rarely have plot bunnies; I have characters in search of a plot. The actions in the story develop by taking two characters that I've invested a lot of time into developing internally and putting them in situations and places that I understand and just sorta... seeing what happens. They're defined before I put them on the page, and I often know how their stories go years beyond what happens in the story.

I did a contest entry earlier this year with a real simple sex-romp plot. College guy and his girlfriend want to try butt stuff, it doesn't go well, she recruits her ex-girlfriend as a stand-in butt. The ex is named Corrine, and the only piece of information about that character in the piece is that she's the FMC's ex. But beyond that, she's a senior, getting her degree in fine arts. I'm pretty sure she's attending George Washington University (which is beyond her family's means financially, so I need to think about that a bit more before I lock it in, and fortunately it's never mentioned in the story). She's a painter -- oils and watercolor by preference. Troubled home life. Her father walked out on the family when she was a kid. She's got a younger brother who's kind of a fuckup. He'll go to jail a few times for petty stuff before he gets his shit together; her father never will. So she's carrying around some emotional baggage. She's going to have some lost years right out of college while her friends and peers soar.

Eventually she'll appear in another story. She's got a little group of girlfriends at a gym. She's sorta the second-in-command in that little group; if it's Brooklyn-99, she's the Rosa. Still carrying the baggage, and hopefully pretty well, but she's teetering a bit. She's night manager at a gas station because it pays the rent and has benefits, and she's trying to spin up an OnlyFans focused on livestreamed paintings -- and trying to decide if she's willing to make the jump to fully sexual content. She will, and she won't regret it. It'll get her into a healthy financial place, she'll meet a girl and have a happy relationship... for a while. It'll end amicably. Ten years down the line, she's godmother to the kids of the MMC/FMC; thirty years down the line she's at the family reunion as the cool artsy aunt.

That character doesn't let me do anything that's contrary to her nature, unless it's a contradition the character would do naturally.

Quoting is weird, let's see if I did this right.

I personally start with plot bunnies. I have a whole document tracker of them, and some of them scare me. Too big to touch.

But the characters end up being partially defined by little quirks in my own writing. A word choice here or there will define a lot. They have to be the kind of person that would say this or that, so that sets a lot of the characteristics. And as the plot develops, I'll double back to the intro to reinforce some of those points that I liked best.

I've yet to write someone with such a long story planned for them, though that just means it's a new area to try. I like to grow, so I'll try anything. I could see how that kind of plotting would protect you from internal contradictions, for sure. But I'm a "pantser" as I hear we're called up in here, so the idea of writing an entire character's backstory is intimidating.

 

[YmaOHyd]

I've yet to write someone with such a long story planned for them, though that just means it's a new area to try. I like to grow, so I'll try anything. I could see how that kind of plotting would protect you from internal contradictions, for sure. But I'm a "pantser" as I hear we're called up in here, so the idea of writing an entire character's backstory is intimidating.

It's not that bad. It's a self-reinforcing loop, I guess.

Corrine was created for a series and loosely based on someone I know. I started with three facts about her: I wanted her to be a regular at the gym that will be a secondary setting in the series. I wanted her to have the sort of job that's associated with being a slacker. I wanted her to be in a creative field that lends itself well to using OnlyFans in a not-100%-sexual capacity that wasn't something that would come up in scenes at the gym, so no yoga or workout stuff. So: gas station manager. After Clerks it's like the quintessential slacker job. Writing is more a Patreon thing; OnlyFans is a visual medium. So, painting.

Now I have a person who's talented enough as a painter to want to make a living doing it but hasn't been able to yet. I know she went to college, and because she shows up in a one-off story about two college students from old-money families, it's probably a decent college. The location gives me a few options to work with. Good college, aspirations to be a professional painter = fine arts degree. GW has a fine arts program, so GW. Since I haven't specified, I may change that.

That character is designed to be a bit of the straw that stirs the drink sexually. Her appearance in the one-off is specifically to do things that the FMC isn't comfortable doing. Her appearance in the series is to be a bit of an edgier counter-point to the stable, loving relationship the MMC/FMC have. So she's probably got some sort of baggage. Daddy issues are a classic, so I combined elements of some of what's in my own family history, back a few generations, with elements of the real-life person's life to create the situation with her family.

One of the themes of that story is (uh, will be. Despite having nothing new published for six months that series is not over) that people need to feel five elements of love to be fulfilled: self-love, sensual love, familial love, love of friends, and love for one's partner. It's important to me for the principle characters to arrive in that place in their lives. Once I knew how the story of the FMC and the MMC would end -- I don't know how it'll get to that point -- it was easy enough to find a place for Corrine within that framework.

Each time a character appears, I do find new things about them -- the little quirks you mention. And they grow in the telling of the story; they're just anchored to the fixed points I've set down ahead of time. That way, hopefully, they grow with the story and not out of it.

 

[nice90sguy]

I usually know how my (paper-thin) characters are going to react, so no.

But the main reason I'm posting here is to say that your writing is really good: It's not often that I read I/T stories, and when I do, I'm usually groaning at their predictability. But not with your stories; the characters are really believable.

 

[stickygirl]

New poster here. Hello. Hi. How are you?

My wife made this comment... "Do your characters behave the same after they're done being written?"

I was quiet for like three minutes after that, thinking about it. And I don't know. Do your characters behave the same once you've stopped puppet-mastering them? Or do they look back at what you've written, what you've made them do, and shudder?

Of course, what your character would do is defined in your own writing, but there's a point at which they feel like they are defined. Solid. Almost real. They would fight a turn of events if you gave them a voice to do so.

I write T/I exclusively so far, and IMO I really take pains to make the content fit the character, but sometimes the horny mind takes over to the detriment of the characters.

Do you ever feel like you've taken a character for a walk outside of what they would do themselves?

I co-wrote a story where the characters were watching and commenting on what the authors had written about them. Of course the authors themselves were characters, but somehow mixed in there was some sex as well.

My other characters are very much real, live their own independent life and I only visit them when their doing something interesting for the sake of a story. Would you bury your character after use like a spent condom? No way!

Hannah & Karolina have bought a place together and are thinking of adopting. Vicki and Leah aren't together any more but she's dating a player from Brighton & Hove and is thinking of moving to Brighton ( which incidentally, I think is a great idea ). Paul is still a wanker and is living alone now with his guilt.

Good question btw and welcome to the AH.

 

[Five_Inch_Heels]

Mis behave.


They hang out in the green room waiting for their next role.


Might be a while though.

 

[StillStunned]

I try to avoid thinking of my characters as real people, with lives beyond the story. That kind of thing tends to result in the writer falling in love with them, and wanting to tell every detail of their lives even when it doesn't make for an interesting story or move the plot forward. The result is an endless soap opera, or worse: the Wheel of Time.

 

[LegendInMyOwnMind]

I always begin with character concepts. The MMC is often, but not always, an alter ego of me. In some cases, the FMCs are based on women I could well have loved in an only slightly different universe. In others, pure figments of my imagination. https://www.literotica.com/s/my-crazy-sisters is inspired by a porn video.

The plots, such as they are, flow from the characters.

 

[crookedletter]

This is a good question to ask yourself, I think, when you're looking at a draft and wondering what it needs. If the characters' actions feel contrary to what they would do if they had their own autonomy, forced in service to your plot, then I would say that's a problem that needs addressed.

I know eyes roll when writers talk about letting characters take over, letting stories write themselves, as if the characters exist outside of the writer's mind. I know they don't; I know even when characters seem to pull my story from where it was originally aimed it's me that's doing it. But it's my internal and shifting conception of who my characters are, informed in part by how they're materializing on the page as I write. And I enjoy that process of discovery, of challenging myself to allow the story to take turns I didn't originally plan and then reassessing what I have at that point.

If I resist, and insist on squeezing a square character into a round hole*, I think the result is going to feel unnatural and awkward.

* unless that's part of the kink I'm going for

 

[TiberiusPrime]

When I'm done writing my characters, I'm done. Their story is complete. (I have one lone exception for it though.) And they generally will get to live out their "happily ever after", too.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Of course, what your character would do is defined in your own writing, but there's a point at which they feel like they are defined. Solid. Almost real. They would fight a turn of events if you gave them a voice to do so.

Do you ever feel like you've taken a character for a walk outside of what they would do themselves?

I constantly have characters arrive in a story, often in the space of a paragraph, steaming up from my subconscious to place themselves into a story and become a central part of it. Several have gone off into their own stories, and on occasion they've entered my dreams - they're as real as any other dream entity.

I almost depend on it happening, to be honest. Sometimes I feel my job as the writer is simply to keep up with the characters, who definitely have lives of their own.

 

[EdwardsOtherSide]

Characters, for me, definitely take on a life of their own.
I am writing a fourth "Confession" story because the characters seem to have gotten away from me and get down right nasty about being allowed to express themselves.

My characters always start with a story, but the more I invest in the character, the more power they wield to shape the stories.

I should probably talk to my therapist about this.

 

[ADirtyPerv]

I try to avoid thinking of my characters as real people, with lives beyond the story. That kind of thing tends to result in the writer falling in love with them, and wanting to tell every detail of their lives even when it doesn't make for an interesting story or move the plot forward. The result is an endless soap opera, or worse: the Wheel of Time.

I feel that for sure. My response (so far) is to almost never do sequels. You get a snapshot, a glimpse of the initial start of things, and then I gotta back away. Before I ever started posting, I had a ~100k word monstrosity going, and I thought it was halfway decent, but it was so bogged down in details. Some chapters would only advance like a third of a day, or would just be one encounter. Every character had every bit of their lives fleshed out, and it felt like a Mentalcase story (no shade, I simply don't have the energy to keep that kind of story going).

The one sequel I wrote to one of my stories was almost double the length of the original, and I knew I couldn't do it very often.

All that said, I can't help but treat my characters as real. They just feel that way to me. Anything else and I feel like I'm using them as tools, slaves to the plot, and that feels not great to me.

 

[ADirtyPerv]

If I resist, and insist on squeezing a square character into a round hole*, I think the result is going to feel unnatural and awkward.

* unless that's part of the kink I'm going for

I feel this pain so much. I'm an unapologetic perv, especially wrt anal, but some characters simply will not engage in such things, and it's aggravating. The peg simply would not go in that hole with the way I've written them, and I just have to let it go. Le sigh. I don't think I've gone overboard on that yet, had them engage in that act out of character, but it's been close.

 

[old_prof]

I try to avoid thinking of my characters as real people, with lives beyond the story. That kind of thing tends to result in the writer falling in love with them,

I'm the exact opposite (and I might have left off the end of his post, because that might hit home a bit too much).

I start almost every story with characters and a scenario. If I can't believe the characters will do what the scenario needs, I can't write it. My characters are absolutely real to me.

When I "finished" my original series, where I definitely was in love with many of the characters, I went through a very dark few days. (It was a very intense writing burst -- I had written 315K words about them in just two and a half months.) It felt like I had lost several very close friends. It wasn't quite like they had all died in a fiery crash or something. More like I had moved to a distant country, where I had no interest in being and knew no one. I knew I could still go back and visit (I already had plans on writing more stories in the universe). But they no longer were in my head 24-7. I missed them.

To me, there is an intimacy with my characters that is not possible IRL. I know what make them tick in ways I will never know about another real human. I have been living with y wife for over 45 years now, I will never know anyone as well as I know her. And yet we had a deep relationship conversation last night, much of which addressed ways we still don't really understand parts of the other.

Even though I do understand my characters in ways that are not possible with another human, my mind still plays tricks on me to give them their independence. Once they've become real people in my head, I cannot change them in fundamental ways. They are who they are. I can whisper suggestions in their head, so to speak, but that only goes so far. I was stuck on two romances I was writing a few months ago; I could not make one couple stop fighting (except during sex) and I could not make the POV FMC fall in love with her intended. I finally played enough relationship counselor for the first couple that it worked. The other one? I finished it, but I don't think she ever accepted him with all her heart. And the readers didn't buy it either. It's my lowest rated Romance.

Sorry for how long this, was, but this is an important topic to me.

 

[crookedletter]

I feel this pain so much. I'm an unapologetic perv, especially wrt anal, but some characters simply will not engage in such things, and it's aggravating. The peg simply would not go in that hole with the way I've written them, and I just have to let it go. Le sigh. I don't think I've gone overboard on that yet, had them engage in that act out of character, but it's been close.

You mentioned T/I in your original post, and I've had similar issues there. The one story I have in that category is far longer than I originally intended, and I have another occasionally in progress that's even longer.

I understand the pull of the category, the inherent tension in the taboo, and obviously I'm drawn to that in certain respects. But I have a really hard time getting my characters to cross that line. The tension is there, the needed payoff is clear, but often when I think it's time to pay it off I find my characters aren't ready yet.

 

[JudyOfOregon]

Interesting question? thanks.

the first 2 comments on my first story frat-house-bdsm-party asked me to "finish it" or "part 2".
so, my earliest experience with other [lit] users was "what happens to you AFTER the story?"
i purposely ended with a cliff-hanger with no intention of following up, like "use your imagination".
and so it was my writing choice, but still... use your imagination !!

Judy

 

[old_prof]

Interesting question? thanks.

the first 2 comments on my first story frat-house-bdsm-party asked me to "finish it" or "part 2".
so, my earliest experience with other [lit] users was "what happens to you AFTER the story?"
i purposely ended with a cliff-hanger with no intention of following up, like "use your imagination".
and so it was my writing choice, but still... use your imagination !!

Judy

Just be warned. My first comment on my first story asked me to continue it. I took them too seriously. That first story is now less than 1 percent of the total writing I have done about those characters.

 

[ADirtyPerv]

Interesting question? thanks.

the first 2 comments on my first story frat-house-bdsm-party asked me to "finish it" or "part 2".
so, my earliest experience with other [lit] users was "what happens to you AFTER the story?"
i purposely ended with a cliff-hanger with no intention of following up, like "use your imagination".
and so it was my writing choice, but still... use your imagination !!

Judy

Oh I get that for sure. I intentionally ended one of my stories with an eldritch monstrosity about to explain its entire existence. People were immediately clamoring for more, and I just wonder if they're expecting me to go into the details of some chthonic supergod. Like, I dunno, use your imagination. Or go read Lovecraft (ignoring the racism). You'll get the gist.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

Most of my stories are reasonably realistic, so yes, I generally have thought through a fair bit more of the characters' lives. Just that most of it doesn't translate into a story anyone else would be interested in.

Laura and Dave are cosily domestic, bicker about loading the dishwasher, have sufficient sex to produce a second child, deal with her having depression, recovery, various instances of sex. They meet up with other characters and chat a lot. Sometimes have sex. All very nice, but there's not a story there, that anyone else would care about. I may tease one out, but won't inflict it on you all until I'm certain it's a story other people might want to read.

 

[KittyOfSteele]

My wife made this comment... "Do your characters behave the same after they're done being written?"

I was quiet for like three minutes after that, thinking about it. And I don't know. Do your characters behave the same once you've stopped puppet-mastering them? Or do they look back at what you've written, what you've made them do, and shudder?

That's the thing: my characters aren't puppets, they are living breathing people, and what they do is what they do. I don't plan plots, I plan situations, and let them go as they want. There was a story that I wrote on my phone in which I sat on my pants for almost the whole manuscript, and all I can tell you is that if I've puppet-mastered the protagonist (plotted the whole thing), she would've slapped me for not being kinky enough, and I don't even know how many orgies I got her into through my influence of where she was meant to go, but it was almost the whole novel.

Of course, what your character would do is defined in your own writing, but there's a point at which they feel like they are defined. Solid. Almost real. They would fight a turn of events if you gave them a voice to do so.

I'm a Goddess, my darling, and they live in an universe of my creation. The mere concept of being a God already makes me immune to this. If I don't exist, then fighting is pointless. If I exist, then an everyperson picking up a fight against an omniscient and omnipresent being is already a fight that they lost. They can try to fight a turn of events. Maybe they could win that, but more often than not they lose. Again, I plan situations, not plots. It's their duty to solve them with what they have, and I've given them everything to solve those, even if they seem impossible; especially if they are impossible. That's the whole point.

They can be mad at me all they want, but truth is we are all slightly different than the day before, and so are they.

Do you ever feel like you've taken a character for a walk outside of what they would do themselves?

I have done that, and it turned out into something that I've never written before. I don't want to do that again though, because I would've lost the plot if I didn't keep notes of everything that happened on a different file labelled a journal.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

I've mentioned previously in other threads that I have an Excel file that I use to story board out my tales from plot bunny to completion.

One of the tabs in the spreadsheet contains nothing but the details on all of my main characters, and interesting side players from all the stories. This includes their specific timeline from DOB to school years and beyond, other milestones in their lives, key personality traits, occupation, etc.

I can be writing a totally unrelated story, and if I have the need for a particular character, I can go back to the spreadsheet and select just the right match rather than creating someone new.

I think that inserting familiar characters adds to the enjoyment for readers of previous tales and increases their loyalty to all my stories.