Smart Bitches Trashy Books | All of the romance, none of the bullshit.

As I said below, for me, the characters I write MUST be real to me, or they won’t be real for the reader. I have to care about them, understand them, know them in order to sit my ass down and tell their story. In my books—and I believe in relationship stories—the characters drive the story. They should do the unexpected from time to time—say or do something I hadn’t planned for them.

But.

I don’t expect to have them knock on my door and come in for a drink. I’m not going to plan a surprise party for their birthdays.

Once, I had a reader write me a seething letter because I killed a cat in a book. She would never, never, NEVER read me again EVAH because I’d killed this cat, ergo I was a horrible person. I remembering thinking, well, actually the bad guy killed the cat. And it was a PRETEND cat. A pretend bad guy, too. The pretend bad guy also killed many pretend people in the book, but that didn’t seem to bother her.

Ultimately it’s all make-believe, for the writer and the reader. It should just be believeable and entertaining make-believe for all parties—real and pretend. But obviously there are some, on both sides of the page, who blur the line between fact and fiction.

What Nora said.  My characters are “real” to me within the context of what I’m writing, and I know things are working when they begin to do things I hadn’t planned.  Not going off in a strange new direction, but habits, quirks, etc., that just seem to grow organically.

I can be in a store and see an outfit which would work for one of my characters—but I’m not about to grab it off the rack and spend my money on it.

There is this great little short story in Daw’s 30th anniversary collection by Mercedes Lackey called “After Midnight.”  An author is waken up by her creations to listen to them gripe about the storylines that she has given them (some great one liner for people familiar with her books).  It reminds me of actors harranging a director.  When reading it I thought how novel it was that a character in a book could be so real to it’s creator. To imagine someone blurring the lines of reality so much that she buys gifts for them is just a little too much for me.

But then, there are a whole lotta people who believe that pro-wrestling is real and even try to immitate it in their backyard.

If interested in the story I mentioned above…
http://www.mercedeslackey.com/chapters/myste.html
Free read.

Me too—what Nora and Caro said about writing characters.

However, on the receiving end, I empathize with the crazy Nora reader who got angry about the cat. Perhaps I get further into stories than some people. I remember having a violent reaction to the end of The Deer Hunter and Sommersby. I walked out of Braveheart when I saw what was coming. And I was furious about the horse and the wolf in Dances with Wolves. Maybe this is why I write comedy.

My characters are “real” to me, but I have no delusions that they are REAL. I could tell you what they carry about in their pockets, but that’s more of a history lesson than anything else. They do have a tendency to take over sometimes and not do as I tell them (outline them?). LOL!

Well, I can tell you what kind of music my characters like, and sometimes what they would like if it wasn’t written a hundred and fifty years after their deaths, but I’m not buying the CDs for them.

I’ve written something one evening, read it the next morning, and thought “Wait a second, it was *not* my idea for the villainess to jump into bed with the comedy relief.  But if I leave it in, entertaining awkwardness will ensue.”  I even once had a completely different character emerge as the protagonist in a second draft.  He was meant to be the antagonist, but he got more interesting than the original hero, and I wound up rewriting it with him as an anti-hero.

But.  There is a difference between letting characters do what they do, and letting them have what they want.  Your fans telling you to kill characters might not be sufficient reason to kill them, but LKH is objecting on the grounds that she can’t kill them because they’re real people to her.  If you have a plot that requires characters to die in order to have a resolution that’s satisfying and logical, then kill the characters.  If you’re so attatched to them that you must write more about them, keep writing AU stories and keep them to yourself.  The above mentioned antagonist who took over the book is as real as a character of mine has ever been to me, but he’s still ending the book in a straight jacket.

As usual, Nora said it best.  My characters have to be “real” because otherwise they’re not interesting, but I wouldn’t want to buy them presents.

However, yesterday when I was writing my WIP my heroine did something unexpected, and I went with it.  I realized afterwards she needed to do this to show some character development.  That just means my subconscious was directing the writing because I like to think I’m a good writer, and that’s what happens—stuff deep inside your brain rises to the surface ‘cause it’s needed.

It was not because I was channeling some crazy broad who wants me to take her to Saks.

Nora, you killed a cat? A small fluffy kitty????? Oh my gawd, I’m shocked. Really. I mean, you seemed always so ... so nice. And then you went and killed a cat. *sadly shaking her head* What has the world come to ... ;-)

I love that story by Mercedes Lackey—“The Lackey-patented formula for success—make your audience identify with and care deeply for a character and then drop a mountain on him!” I love Lackey’s Valdemar stories and nearly peed my pants laughing when I first read “After Midnight”. Since then I’ve tried to frighten my characters with the threat of dropping mountains if they misbehave, but somehow they seem to be rather unperturbed by it all. *g* (Which reminds me—Lackey killed off several horsies in her novels—whaaaa!)

But despite their occasional misbehaving and departing from my oh-so wonderful outlines, my characters don’t have amazon wishlists (probably because they didn’t have internet back in 1820-something) and I don’t think of them as real persons. Sadly, I don’t even know what’s in their pockets.

Only wish I could write.  As a reader, love characters that feel real with believable plots & story line.  Some authors talk about a favorite character demanding or sharing their story, I can understand that. Escapism is grand fun, but loosing reality is something else altogether.  So “Die Michah” shirts and “Ranger” coffee mugs do not interest me.  Choosing gifts & planning parties for fictional characters…..eeewwwh, kinda creepy.  Therapy could be the answer.

My experience of writing is that I’m looking in on a scene and recording what I see/hear. If I can’t see it, I can’t “get it right”.

I do the same thing in reverse when I read. Quite often, my mind will translate the words into a movie-like scene in my head. Typos, homonyms, and poorly-constructed sentences in the narrative parts of a book make a book unreadable for me; they jerk me out of the “movie”.

The only times I’ve bought something for a character were things to use as writing totems. I have taken characters shopping; you learn the oddest things about the character that way.

What Nora said.

I once couldn’t get a handle on a hero until I filled out a character questionnaire- you know, what kind of car does he drive, what pets, etc. When I got to favorite drink for some unknown reason I put, “Coffee. Just regular coffee. Black. No espresso, no foam, no flavors. Just coffee.” From then on I knew who he was and it all fell into place.

That said, I did NOT buy him a can of Folger’s for Christmas.

My characters walk onto the page more or less fully-formed. I say “more or less” because I don’t know them yet, but if I turn my attention on them, everything is already there.

And yes, they do or say unexpected things, and this is almost always a better idea than whatever my conscious brain was coming up with. I know it’s just my subconscious at play, but if thinking of my characters as free-willed and “real” gives me good, dependable access to my subconscious, I’m not going to resist the technique.

I, too, can’t kill main characters. I’ve killed plenty of characters, but they walked onto the page dead—I knew they were going to die before I ever set them to paper.

That said, I make a point of reminding myself that these people live inside my head, and I can actually push them around if I need to (and sometimes I do).

Sounds to me as if LKH forgot that last part of the equation. That “spang!” noise was the sound of a connection to reality snapping.

Not real.  Don’t have any control over me.  Fiction.  Can go for days without thinking about any one of them, no sweat.  It’s fun to write about ‘em, and it’s profitable, but that’s more or less the end of it for me.

That’s so funny about the cat killing - but it brought something to mind for me. About ten years ago, I was reading Stephen King on a semi-regular basis and since I like the movie IT (made for TV but not half bad, Pennywise scares the crap out of me!), I thought I’d read the book.

I don’t remember the entire book, but one part will always stand out in my mind because I actually choked up about it - when Henry (the bully, who gets his in the end) kills Mike’s dog. It took King about six pages to describe how this rotten kid fed the dog hamburger to make it think they were friends, then he laces the hamburger with poison,gives it to this poor dumb dog, ties the dog to a tree, and just leaves it. For SIX pages (a rough estimate) King went on about how this dog died. It was horrible and I had to put the book down. He kills off a few more dogs later (maybe some cats, I don’t remember) but this one section is scorched into my brain. Yikes, I must be as loony as the presents-for-characters nut.

That said, when it comes to my characters, they start out as flat, one-dimensional people. I know the basics and let their personalities evolve with the story. By my last draft, they are flesh and blood, with faults and good points, and contradictions in their makeups so they are as quirky and imperfect as real people. I know their slang, their mannerisms, their idiosyncrasies as well as the real people in my life. And sometimes they take over the story, which seems to make my job that much easier because when that happens, they usually go in the right direction.

In one book, I was halfway through it when I realized the hero was far too angry to be likeable. I rewrote, and the rest of the story changed for the better. Those fake people know what they’re doing. I just need to listen better at times.

As for Amazon, my characters don’t have wish lists, because they all reside in the 18th century and earlier. But I have an idea of what’s in their pockets, so I guess I’m on the right track.

It was an old pretend cat—not a fluffy pretend kitten. Really an elderly pretend cat who’d had a good pretend life until its pretend demise.

Still, too bad for the cat.

I can rarely go a day without thinking, on some level, about the characters in whatever my current wip might be. They’re right there with me. Must be one of the reasons I write a lot—just to get them out of my head again, and make room for the next.

But I’m still not buying them a gift, or making them dinner.

At least you didn’t drop a moutain on the cat.

I’m really going to get hate mail if my most recent manuscript ever sells—I killed a horsie.  But I had to, because it put the hero and heroine in Mortal Peril they otherwise could’ve galloped away from, and I think it’s one of the best scenes I’ve written so far.  And I promise the beast went straight to Pretend Horse Heaven.

Like several commenters above, I don’t shop for my characters because I can’t figure out how to deliver the gifts to them in 1812.  (Barring a chance to travel in the TARDIS, but now I’m imagining someone else’s pretend people are real…)  I tend to talk about my characters as if they’re real, they often surprise me as I write, and I say I have a muse, but deep down I know it’s all in my head.  It’s just more fun to keep the process a little mysterious, and I’m afraid if I analyzed it too much I’d destroy it.

I have been known to buy CDs for my characters, because when I’m stuck and need a push of “what in the hell does he/she do *next*?” I slip in the CD and it helps me a) get back to a place where I am familiar with my characters again (esp after an absence of a couple of weeks/months/years), and b) makes me think as them for just long enough to often get through the challenging bit. They’re real people, sometimes with different tastes than mine. It’s interesting.

I’ve known writers who talk about their characters like they’re real people. To a certain point, that’s necessary, because (like Nora said) if they aren’t “real” to the writer, it’s very likely to fall flat.

I’ve had characters up and tell me they weren’t going to do “x.” My villains, for instance, keep deciding they want to be anti-heroes instead. Disturbingly, the story is usually better for it.

Do I know what my characters like to listen to, to drink, to watch, etc? Yeah, in most cases. (I don’t really need to know for side characters, lol.) But that doesn’t mean I’m going to buy them their favorite music or drinks, or that I’m even going to think about it while in the store.

And it certainly doesn’t mean I’m going to tell my lead characters I won’t kill people they love, or not do things necessary for the plot because I’m afraid to hurt my characters. For fuck’s sake.

Whatever happened to a healthy separation between fantasy and reality?

heh. I still want to know what would be on LKH’s characters’ shopping list. That would be a great contest—guessing what they’d want for Christmas. Let’s shop for your favorite fictional being! (What would Gregory House want? What kind of goodies would be in Captain Ahab’s stocking?)

My characters are real enough to have personalities in that I know their responses. That can be a nuisance when an editor suggests a response that won’t fit the character. I’ve found it’s almost easier to write something new than try to force a finished character to reacte in a manner I know won’t fit.

I have have less of a problem messing with situations in which they find themselves. The story is less formed in my brain than the characters.

I admit that I worry a little about writers who find themselves acting on the orders of imaginary creatures…

I’m the author, I get to drive.

Yes, given a particular set of circumstances, my mind might come up with something I wouldn’t have predicted a chapter ago, but that’s not because these characters have evolved their own free will. It’s because I’ve come up with a new idea (which I hope is sorta the point).

I adore some of the characters I’ve written, to the point of daydreaming new adventures for them that will never see print, but buying presents is out of the question.

The inability to separate fantasy from reality is called a “delusion” in the med biz.  We have some lovely medications that can make most (sometimes even all) delusions GO AWAY.  After attempting to read two Merry Gentry’s, (first time I ever winced while reading, by the way)I wouldn’t mind if most of LKH’s delusions went away and never appeared again in print.  Not a writer, but as a reader I adore the characters who are so well written that you want to meet a real person who is just as interesting as that character.  But I wouldn’t have a tea party with them either.

I have been known to buy CDs for my characters, because when I’m stuck and need a push of “what in the hell does he/she do *next*?”

But you don’t expect the characters to show up at your house to get the CD from you, do you?

A lot of people have glommed on to what LKH said about buying presents for her characters, and I have to say: I don’t believe it. I think it’s what you say if you want to sound like a fiercely dedicated writer. I don’t think LKH realized what it would sound like (because she thinks she’s the only one who makes up characters? dunno), but then I don’t think she often realizes what the stuff she says is going to sound like.

I see my characters as “real” as those in movies. They move me, hopefully my readers too. But they’re characters, not people. And once a story is done (and *I* write the goddamn story, because I’m the Bitch Goddess of the Whole Galaxy and *I* Pilot the Spaceship With the Big Honking Aft Pulse Cannon) I want my characters to leave. Demons purged, you may leave, thank you very much. Otherwise, they become like teenagers, they take all the hot water and raid the fridge.

It’s scary to me that made-up characters in someone’s mind would take so much importance that the person would feel compelled to do anything. Yeah sure, a story can take a twist you hadn’t expected, but please man, it sounds a bit like those Artistes Who Must Suffer For Their Art.

I do get the “taking over” thing. The heroine of my first book walked into the black moment of my second book, made a few threats, and just like a little deus ex machina tied it all up neat as a pin . . . then I had to accept that it was NOT heroic for my hero to allow this and rewrite the whole ending. LOL! It wasn’t so much that my characters were doing things against my will, as it was that having her step in was so in character for her, it felt right when I was in the moment.

I’m not buying my characters any presents until they come to my house and clean it, and that means the windows, too, and vacuuming under the furniture.  Until then:  not real.

Why am I flashing on those wooden puppets that come alive and say, “Why did you lock me in the box, Bobby?  You made me mad, Bobby, and now you’ll have to pay.”

If my characters were real, I’d ship the good lookin’, smart-mouthed, lucky as hell heroine off to Timbuktu and hop into bed with the hero(es).

Guess it’s a good thing they’re not real.  I’d get some hot sex, but spend a lotta time incarcerated for kidnapping and illegal transport of a human being.

Nora said-

Really an elderly pretend cat who’d had a good pretend life until its pretend demise.

I appreciate all the pretends in that sentence, because it means you appreciate the. . . well, pretend-ness of it all.

It really weirds me out that some authors (since LKH admitted to it) actually semi-forget that they are not real. 

I’m not going to read her books because I just plain don’t like paranormals - not because she’s a little off.  Authors who are a little off can write some damn entertaining things.

Neal Stephenson tortured a dog once in a book. I’m not a dog lover, but it was extrodinarily difficult to read past.
Don’t know why.

I’m not sure whether it would have helped to think that it was just a pretend dog. The emotions the writing engendered were still real, even if the dog was made-up.

~“Why did you lock me in the box, Bobby?  You made me mad, Bobby, and now you’ll have to pay.”~

No, no, NO!! Not the evil little dolls. Not them. They have evil little weapons. It’s always a knife. Evil little dolls with knives ARE real. I know. They’re under my bed just waiting for my arm or leg to fall over the edge while I sleep so they can hack at me.

Otherwise, it’s all pretend.

It’s absolutely the writer’s goal—or should be—to emotionally engage the reader, to suck them into the character—even the cats—so they FEEL something.

But when a reader feels so stronger she accuses the writer of being—in reality—inhumane to non-pretend animals, a hater of same because the storyline called for poor old pretend kitty to die a bad death, the reader’s gone around the bend. 

It was kinda fun to read the letter, to be honest.

Nora, who has never killed an actual cat, dog, camel or mongoose.

As a reader and a dabbling writer I agree that good characters seem real.  They do things that are ‘in character’ and even occasionally ‘out of character’ or unexpected, but there have to parameters established. 
I agree with Diane that I suspect hyperbole, but LKH put it out there, so there you go. 
As for the killing of pretend animals, I think it is harder to make that separation for feeling that helpless fictional pets don’t deserve such treatment.  But I must say, while I have been tempted to send a sternly worded letter to an author over something or other, it has never been over a poor helpless pretend pet death.

To play Devil’s Advocate (it’s all pro bono work), LKH has written 14+ books with the same protagonist.  That’s a lot of time to share a brain with someone.  And during the first draft at least, we have to walk in our POV characters’ shoes and see the world through their eyes.  So I can see how Anita ‘n’ Company could infiltrate Hamilton’s mind and heart to the point where she feels genuine pain at the thought of harming them.  If she says they’re real to her, I believe it.

That being said, during the revision process, we have to step back and take a critical look at what our characters have done and ask ourselves, “Is it right for the story?”  If not, then tough shit, little girl/man, you have to die, or be less bossy, or grow a set, whatever serves the novel as a whole. 

Maybe after 14 books it becomes impossible to have that distance.  Dunno.  I can’t imagine writing that many novels in one series without getting phenomenally bored.  I would end up killing everyone off just to save my sanity.

Everyone but the cat, of course.

I channel the story. Literally. I don’t ever have conscious recollection of creating a plotline in the initial writing process.  The creation comes when I edit later—most painful.

That characters are the same. They do what they like, even when it throws me for a complete loop. But while their voices are quite real, they are not. Once the story is done, they go back into my alter ego’s imagination.

It is a little frightening how real they appear to others, though. Even my secondary characters get into the act…people want to know what happens to them, even though they were in the book for only a page or so.

‘But when a reader feels so stronger she accuses the writer of being—in reality—inhumane to non-pretend animals, a hater of same because the storyline called for poor old pretend kitty to die a bad death, the reader’s gone around the bend.’

Maybe you need the movie disclaimer: No actual animals were injured or killed in the process of writing or publishing this book.

I don’t know anything about my characters until I start writing them.  Someone once said that action reveals character, and for me that’s the case.  I don’t know what’s in my character’s pocket until she needs something and sticks her hand in there.  In fact, for the first book I wrote, I didn’t even know what the hero’s name was until the book was just about done.  Now that sounds wacky, but I wrote about a ninja, and towards the end, I realized that not having a name was part of what being a ninja was. Ninjas shouldn’t need to have a name because you shouldn’t even be aware that they’re there. So for the most part, I learn who my characters are in the act and process of writing.

I’m not a writer, but I find this fascinating. For someone like me who struggles with even a single paragraph of non-technical writing, the idea that a good writer’s brain can be so fertile that it creates characters who direct themselves is just mindblowing.

That said, there’s a series of books that actually goes the extra step. Kasey Michaels’ Maggie books feature a herione who writes Regency mysteries and wakes up one morning to find that her hero is so fully-realized that he and his loveable sidekick have materialized in her apartment and are integrating into her “real” life. And no, she’s not the only one who sees them.

Oh no, please don’t tell me LKH is going all Anne Rice on us. :D

My characters are real to me within the context of my writing, but I never forget that they’re figments of my imagination. Vivid, sure, but not real.

I need to tread carefully here, so I’ll only say that after about 28 books in the In Death series, I’m very attached to the characters, and they’re very real to me within their context.

I guess it’s all about the context for me. Real enough to engage me, and hopefully the reader. Not so real I start to buy Eve a spare pair of gloves because she’s always losing them.

Every writer’s process is individual. What they do or need to do in order to produce the best book they can is correct—for them.

No right way, no wrong way, imo, if this is what works for you.

Kasey Michaels’ Maggie books feature a herione who writes Regency mysteries and wakes up one morning to find that her hero is so fully-realized that he and his loveable sidekick have materialized in her apartment

Hmm.  I wrote a romantic comedy screenplay with this same premise.  I got the idea from the Kate Bush song “Sensual World.”

I guess there are no original ideas left, but mine was a male romance writer and had an existentialist twist, FWIW.

Nora said: I guess it’s all about the context for me. Real enough to engage me, and hopefully the reader. Not so real I start to buy Eve a spare pair of gloves because she’s always losing them.

Word.

Ohhh, RacyLi!

She writes “kickass ninja smut” (that’s her slogan on her site).

Go ahead and roll that one in your mouth for a second. Kickass. Ninja. Smut.

It’s been my addiction for the past week!

And yes, characters take you for a ride sometimes, but *I* am the one with the delete key.

MWA HA HAAA!!

There were two moments in working on Doppelganger (both occurring in the same night of writing) when the characters said and did things I had NOT planned—things which ultimately made the story better and set up the ending to be cooler than it would have been otherwise, though I didn’t realize that until I got there and saw how those two changes fit in.

Of course, when I say that, it’s shorthand for saying that my subconscious took some unexpected turns based on its understanding of the characters and its intuition of what would be cool for the story.  I don’t believe the characters have some objective reality independent of me.  When the characters “come to life,” it’s my subconscious taking the wheel, and it frequently has better ideas than my conscious does.  I wish I could make that happen more often.

Mind you, in the first of those two instances, it literally felt like the character looked up at me out of the scene running in my head and said, “Wrong.”  (If anybody here has read the book, Satomi was the one who did it, and that’s the exact word she uses on the page, too.  Page 293?  That’s my skin trying to crawl off my neck.)  Weird feeling, and that’s why I will use language that suggests my characters do have minds of their own.  Sometimes it feels just like that.

For a cross-medium comparison, I’ve also had similar experiences in role-playing games, when I was thinking so clearly as my character, rather than as myself, that I made perfect in-character decisions without ever having to consider them.  When I’m writing, though, I’m usually having to keep too many people in my mind at once for it to be as frequent of an occurrance.

I’ll consider things like what music or food a character likes, and do online quizzes or memes in-character, as a mental exercise; sometimes it’s a useful way to lead myself toward the reality they need.  Because they do need to feel real, or nobody, myself included, will care what happens to them.

I think (hope?) LKH’s comments play to a marketing strategy: “Come join my crazysexycool world. I think it’s real.

You think it’s real, too, and I’ll spend your money.”

“No, no, NO!! Not the evil little dolls. Not them. They have evil little weapons. It’s always a knife. Evil little dolls with knives ARE real. I know. They’re under my bed just waiting for my arm or leg to fall over the edge while I sleep so they can hack at me.

Otherwise, it’s all pretend.”

I hate to tell you this, Nora, but “Trilogy of Terror” was based on REAL EVENTS!  Yes, the writer who wrote this believed so fervently in the stories (even to the point of knowing that the Karen Black character had a piece of Dentyne, two pennies, and a “Fire & Ice” Revlon lipstick in her pocket, loved Petula Clark’s “Downtown,” and was on her first day of ovulation, that the characters materialized. 

Where are they now?  They’ll be featured on a VH-1 special, “One Hit Monster Wonders” along with Chuckie, the thing from “Alien,” and Linda Blair.

Nora, please keep Galahad safe.

I think any three-dimentional character is going to bear a level of reality. Otherwise, they won’t be real to the reader. And if you write a series, you do get to know them so well you can tell what they’d do in a given situation.

I’m having new covers made for the first two books in my trilogy because the concept we used for the first two won’t work for the third. It seems perfectly natural to tell the artist that Character A wouldn’t wear that—and why.

I’m driving this car, usually very fast on some cliffside roads not meant for racing. I joke that I’m not a very nice God to my characters and my roommate agrees. “You sure do turn up the tension on them,” she told me after reading my galley. But doing that helps me get reactions from characters. Knowing how they react to fear, pain, loss helps me learn them.

I also compare learning about them to dating. I write a bit and feel them out for their fashion sense, politics, whatever. And by the end I create someone I believe could exist even though he or she does not exist in reality.

When I’m really in the trenches writing I will have dreams about my characters. They keep me up at night. But I’ve never contemplated buying them presents. I never thought much about what was in their pockets (unless it was important to the story). And while I’m a little sad to say goodbye to some of them I’m also happy in that “man it’s nice to see the backside of my family after a long visit” sort of way.

P.S. Nora, I killed a dog in my book and when my aunt who just put hers down said, “You don’t kill any dogs in your book, do you?” I blithely said yes before remembering I did slaughter an imaginary dog. Bad author!

Everybody’s already knee-deep in this…I feel…late…Oh well.

I admit I have a problem with reading about animals being harmed in books and yes, I do know they’re pretend animals. It’s just very uncomfortable. That didn’t stop me from having a dog die in my WIP. It was a very sweet, very sad death of an elderly dog and she went to heaven.

But as far as characters go. I started this last WIP out with a man and a woman in a park at night. They were about to get ‘romantic’ across the picnic table when a third character came running across the park interrupting everything and changing the entire course of the WIP. I didn’t invite him. I hadn’t been planning him. He just arrived with his teenage son, a wife and a gun collection. He took over everything.

I did one of those character questionaire things but it was a waste of time - I already knew everything about him. It is very weird how that happened. This guy is very real to me. But he didn’t make it on my christmas list. For one thing because if I buy a firearm for anybody it’s going to be me (that’s what he would want) and he has plenty already; plus he’s not real.  We both know he’s not real.

Reading this particular section of comments was interesting, mostly because 2 of my favorite authors commented.  I love this site.  LOL!  :)

I will say that being a nonpublished author, I’ve had characters say and do things that I didn’t expect.  To me, that means I’ve gotten to know them well enough to figure out what they wanted.  I can’t imagine thinking a character was real, but I’m too much of a realist I guess.  :)

Oops, put this on the wrong post! Anyway, to repeat myself:

—E said: My characters walk onto the page more or less fully-formed. I say “more or less” because I don’t know them yet, but if I turn my attention on them, everything is already there.

I write like this, too. My characters know the beginning and the end of the story - it’s up to them to tell of the journey. Of course, they’ll give me a gimlet eye if I get it wrong and refuse to move on, but that’s as real as it gets. Once the book/story is done, that’s it, there is nothing else to say (which is why I love a happy ending). I move on to the next project, and the characters happily stay in the world I’ve created for them. (They’d be embarrassed if I bought stuff for them.)

As for LKH’s refusal to kill the whiney-assed, clingy, must-have-Anita’s- protection-because-no-one-else-is-strong-enough, girly-men characters, because they’re so real to her, well, she doesn’t have to kill them off (much as I’d like to see mass slaughter and Anita back on her lonesome at Animators Inc.), exile, prison, punishment, interstate, inter-space(!) would suit just as well.

Maybe the cover art for LKH’s next book should be a picture of Anita with a sign hanging around her neck - with arrows pointing to every orifice - saying: Sperm Bank, Deposit Here! Open 24/7! Then we won’t have to read it; we’ll already know what the book’s about.

If nothing else, LKH has taught us how not to write.

“No, no, NO!! Not the evil little dolls. Not them. They have evil little weapons. It’s always a knife. Evil little dolls with knives ARE real. I know. They’re under my bed just waiting for my arm or leg to fall over the edge while I sleep so they can hack at me.

I hate to tell you this, Nora, but “Trilogy of Terror” was based on REAL EVENTS!

OMG… After watching Trilogy of Terror as a teenager I still cannot hang my feet or hand over my bed.  Little dolls and those clapping monkeys ...  shutter…..

I am not a writer and bow down to those with the talent to apply your imagination in a coherent fashion for a story.  It has been so interesting to read about your relationships/thoughts on your characters. 

I don’t find it wrong for an author to feel invested in their characters. But when someone does not like your character/story I assume most sane authors would say “OH well” and chalk it up to differences in opinion. 

LKH does not seem able to take what she does for a living out of who she is.  When fans say I hate you, I hate Anita, I hate blah, blah, blah, they don’t know you.  They only know what your writing ability and imagination have produced. Your “public” persona if you will. When you start to react as if they are attacking you personally then probably you have self esteem problems/mental issues.  What you do (writer) is a huge part of who you are, but I assume most have the common sense to separate your personal life from the author that you are. 

Nora, your reaction to cat women seems appropriate.  Having humor at the sitation is justified, but LKH’s mode of operation would have her and her assistants writing scathing blog entries to fans about how she loves cats and we are stupid because we didn’t understand that cats are really important to her and spouting how many people are buying the cat killer book and ... well you get the point. 

When authors reach past believing in characters to protecting them publicly like mother bears, you are probably going far.

At the risk of being pushed into the “crazy” pile, I basically just have about a million people living in my head and the one that’s the most vocal at present, well, I write down their story for them. Sometimes it almost feels like I’m taking dictation for these people and they’re not my creations at all.

No, they don’t get Christmas presents from me and they don’t tell me go to go steal Cheese Whiz and hide it under my Noche Buena tree in the garden, but I am emphatically NOT in charge. They tell their stories; I write them down. That’s more or less the process. Outlining for me is straight out because I often don’t know what’s coming next until I start writing. That makes it especially fun, sometimes, and completely organic.

Sometimes that creates a mess, but I’m good at making revisions and I have lovely crit partners. The people living in my head don’t seem to mind my tinkering with their stories once I’ve laid them out in rough form, as instructed, and it’s generally with very good results. I don’t know anymore about my characters, however, than what they tell me as we go along.

If you insist, I’ll go stand in the loopy line now…

I’m SOOOO glad to know I’m not the only one out there who has to learn about her characters as she writes.  My hero and heroine, yeah, I usually have a semi-decent understanding of them, but they’re not fully formed at all…I get an idea, and then sit down and pound the keyboard until they’re happy. 

Heck, most of the time I don’t figure out my villain until I’m at least halfway through the manuscript, then have to go back and lay THAT foundation.  It does make them a ton more fun to write about, tho *g*.  I’ve tried outlining, character profiles, the whole nine yards, but my characters always throw me for a loop by doing some small (at the time, seemingly inconsequential) thing that ends up bumping the storyline to the left or right, and inevitably makes it better.  Which is why I don’t torture my critique partners until the damned thing is done!  LOL.

Oh, and I’d better have the right music, otherwise it all comes to a screeching standstill.  I may be in the mood to write to blues, but if my heroine wants to hear Disturbed, she’s not gonna say a peep until the iPod is thrashing.

The huge drawback (obviously) is that writing a synopsis before I finish the manuscript is basically a waste of time (sigh)...

Music is pretty huge for me too. When I was writing Falling, a darker sci-fi romance, I listened to nothing but Placebo for some reason. That wasn’t the heroine’s doing (as far as I know!), but it just felt right. That book was the first one I wrote from first word to last without having an idea, character concepts, plotline, nothing(!) pre-planned before I started. I was working on something else at the time, actually, and it wasn’t going well, so I thought:

“And now for something completely different.”

It was meant to be an exercise more than anything else to get the juices flowing. I sat down to write with an empty mind and Falling was the result. Interesting sidenote, I actually didn’t have a clue I was almost done with it until like two chapters before the end. I was up to 85K words, going, Huh, wonder how all this is going to turn out when things took a twist, the heroine showed me the light, and we wrapped it up. I’m insanely proud of that book.

I’ll throw my sombrero into the ring, along with everybody else.

I do need to get to know my characters, and sometimes this will involve finding out minutae about who they are and what they do and do not like.  Usually, those details come to me without warning.  For the most part, however, I’m in control of who they are and what they want.

As invested as I get in my characters, as important as it is for me to like them as people and want to tell their stories, I have never confused them for actual people.  I may feel sad if a proposal I wrote didn’t go anywhere and I don’t get to bring a certain character to life, but I don’t go into mourning.  Granted, I have not written a character whose story spans more than one book, so perhaps that might cause me to form more of an attachment to them, but I have a hard time imagining myself buying one of my heroines a sweater from Nordstrom, or picking up a six pack of Negro Modelo for my hero.  I don’t think I am skilled enough to fool *myself* into believing that my characters are real people, when an outline and many rewrites prove that there is a tremendous effort involved in their creation.

For me, there is a certain amount of “channeling” involved when it comes to writing, but I can’t help wonder if the insistence that the characters live on their own somehow devalues the work of the author.  It seems as though it guts a critical element of the skill of writing, that a writer can create a fully rounded individual from the strength of their ability, and then manipulate them through the fictive world in such a way that the manipulation is seamless.  Maybe some authors do have characters “tell” them what to do.  Maybe some authors are just Ouija boards and characters and story simply pour through them onto the page.  I’m not one of those authors, for good or for ill. 

However, I’ve also come to feel that the most important relationship in writing is between the reader and the work.  When I was getting my MFA, it was often said in the Workshop that you can’t follow your story around, explaining it to people.  Either the work succeeds on its own merits, or it doesn’t.  What does all this mean, contextually?  It means that I have my theories about writing and process, another author will have hers, but the final determination happens when a reader sits down with a book.  All those elegantly described theories mean very little when the book is opened and read.  It’s a closed system, and, honestly, I like to keep it that way.  Either my characters live for the reader, or they don’t, and if they don’t, I need to figure out why and make the reading experience more involving the next time. 

I do hope that I never get to the point where I have to write extended screeds on my websites explaining my rationale.  That, to me, means I haven’t succeeded at my job.

I haven’t yet gotten to the point of making character soundtracks for my fiction (the way I do for RPGs), but my characters do occasionally have firm opinions on music.  I had to listen to Vivaldi’s “Primavera” on repeat one time, until long past the point when I wanted to scream at the sound of it, because that was the only music that could get me into the headspace of my repressed Victorian main character.  And then there was the time I put into one setting a culture whose religion features a lot of ceremonial drumming.  I had in mind, y’know, taiko.  One group of people in the culture decided that they really liked the beat in Metallica’s “Fuel.”  <sigh>  Not what I had in mind, but there you go.

OMG…Trilogy of Terror gave me nightmares for YEARS.

but I can’t help wonder if the insistence that the characters live on their own somehow devalues the work of the author.  It seems as though it guts a critical element of the skill of writing

This is an excellent point, but as I see it, I’m telling their stories in my words. The way I put the words together, my word choice, my syntax…that’s all mine. My skill, my ability, my gift. If someone else had those exact same characters in her head, she wouldn’t write their story in exactly the same way.

Whether I do my job well or badly is subjective, at least to some degree. What works profoundly for some doesn’t work for others. I don’t get the camp factor of Dara Joy, for instance, but she had a legion of devoted fans. To me, she wasn’t so bad she was good; she was just bad. But others loved the hell out of her stuff. That’s just the way it is, and I think it’s pretty cool to hear about the different ways to people work. I admire the organized writer who can outline down to the smallest detail and stick with that plan all the way to the end but my mind doesn’t work in such an orderly fashion.

Susan Wilbanks said:

Like several commenters above, I don’t shop for my characters because I can’t figure out how to deliver the gifts to them in 1812.  (Barring a chance to travel in the TARDIS, but now I’m imagining someone else’s pretend people are real…)

Girl, if Captain Jack Harkness turns out to be real, I am there. *g*

This is a very interesting discussion to read, since the only things I’ve written are fanfiction, where some aspects of the character are established onscreen by a collaborative group of people (writer, director, actor, even set decorators), and other aspects are “filled in” by fanfic writers. For example, if a guitar is shown in the background of a character’s bedroom, that’s ground zero for a fic where the character plays that guitar, even though it’s never been depicted onscreen.

Because of this practice of extrapolation, in fanfic circles you find lots of offhand mentions of what media they think certain characters would like, foods they hate (or can’t eat, if an allergy has been established in canon), etc. But even in the fanfic community, which already is considered kind of crazy by lots of people, the folks who speak about characters like they’re real are backed away from slowly, much like you would do when you see a strange dog on the street.

(As an aside, actors, like authors, have to keep their characters in that gray zone where they’re “real” enough to have distinct personalities, but not overpowering to the actor’s person. For example, during a costume fitting for The Talented Mr. Ripley, Jude Law and Matt Damon were being fitted for a single pair of trousers that both characters would wear in turn, and the costume designer said to Law, “You know, these pants hang better if you don’t wear underwear.” Law agreed, and then Damon said, “Whereas Tom [his character] would never not wear underwear.”)

So we’ve established that there are “method writers” just as there are “method actors”. LOL!

While not a writer, per se, I do enjoy writing.  And I think that the more real your characters are to you the easier they will be to write because their voices are so much more vivid. However, I do think that a line must be drawn somewhere. They are fictional.

An odd trend in message boards is respecting the characters of the series as well as the author and other board members.  Something always seemed a little off to me about respecting someone that was fictional.  If I think that Lydia Bennett was freaking idiot who should’ve been tossed into the Thames, I feel that I should be able to voice such criticism.

The overly real characters have appeared in Sherrilyn Kenyon’s world (Acherson does have his own blog) and with JR Ward, whose characters come to her site and occasionally chat with the board members.  Okay, I’m enough of a sappy fan that I admit it’s kind of fun.  As long as everyone knows that it’s pretend. With truly rabid fangirls, I can never be sure.

In the end I think that it’s whatever works for a particular author while still keeping them out of a psychiatric ward.

Great thread!

Characters—pretty real. I practice method writing in a way, especially toward the last month or so of a book, when it take over my real life.  At those times, I’ll often buy groceries as the main character, or bring home some piece of clothing that’s just wrong, wrong, wrong for me—but of course, it’s perfect for the heroine.

I’m usually looking for that point, because then I know it’s all coming together.

As a reader, I’d rather think of an author as a little bit “nutty” in her attachment to her characters than, say, as mean or consdescending.

I understand the anxiety some authors feel in wanting to draw a line between their work as craftspeople and the way characters live in the imagination, but I don’t think it’s necessarily nutty at all for an author to think her characters do live in a parallel universe.  When Jennifer Crusie posts pictures of the elaborate boards she makes for her characters, or when she and Bob Mayer talk in their blog about their characters, that seems to me to be sort of a parallel universe for the characaters.  After all, isn’t the imagination a parallel universe where each of us can make anything happen?  I don’t think readers automatically think, “Wow, that author is batshit for seeing her characters as so multi-dimensional.”

But then I’m an extremely objective reader, so I do much much better when an author reaches out to me with more fully realized characters, as I do not project myself into the world of a novel.  I admire readers who are more subjective in their reading experiences, because I think they can connect empathetically to more books than I do, but I’m just not that way.  So I respond better and more fully to a character that has been given more dimension by an author’s imagination. 

Although I have, on occasion, pretended that a certain author is channeling characters I enjoy (because the author has made a less than stellar impression on me online or something), I don’t really believe that even the most fully realized characters “speak” themselves through the author—it’s very clear to me as a reader how an author is mastering the world her imagination has created, and that she’s the creator on both counts.  I commented once on Kinsale’s novels and how I enjoy her books because it feels to me that she’s created this whole world that runs whether I’m observing it or not.  As a reader, I get to stand in a doorway and glimpse this world, where Kinsale has focused my attention on a small selection of people who have an interesting story to share at that very moment.  Not for one minute do I think Kinsale has actually opened a portal in time, but her mastery of the writing, the characters, and the worldbuilding is so perfect that it *feels* as if she’s done just that.  I doubt she shops for her characters, but even if she did, I wouldn’t think she was crazy based on that alone.  Now, if she started soliciting reader donations for Christmas presents for her characters . . .

I was discussing this topic with my husband, who is also a writer, last night, and he felt that when authors do things such as listen to music the character might like, see a hat or pair of shoes the character might wear, or connect things in world to the characters, it’s all part of the writing process.  If I see a backpack that a character might carry and thing, “Lucy Fictional might carry that bag,” I’m actually *writing*, which is very different from seeing the backpack and buying it, thinking, “Lucy is going to love this bag!  I can’t wait to give it to her!” which borders on delusional.

I think my husband is a very smart guy.

Susan wrote:

I tend to talk about my characters as if they’re real, they often surprise me as I write, and I say I have a muse, but deep down I know it’s all in my head.

Hmmm. That might explain why threatening characters with falling mountains, meteors or aliens (the nasty, green-little-buggers sort) doesn’t seem to work.

How real are they to me?  I once had a tarot card reading that had bugger-all to do with my life, but was a perfect reading of the character whose book I was pitching the next day at conference.

She gets her own tarot readings.  She has her own MySpace.  Any minute now we’re going to split down the middle and become two separate people.

I’ll be the one rocking gently in the corner, gibbering to myself.

Sometimes I think about the poor sod who has the job of proof-reading Laurell K. Hamilton’s dreck, and then I’m not entirely surprised at the number of typos and spelling errors which make it through to the final product.  I imagine that once you’ve corrected ‘arduer’ to ‘ardeur’ eighty million times, your will to live rather gets sapped.

Seriously.  She ruined my favourite trashy series for a plot device SHE CAN’T EVEN SPELL RIGHT?  NOT ONCE?  Why even bother with French vampires, if one’s French is that atrocious?  Why not stick to American vampires, and call it ‘the horny’?

Characters can become very influential in the writing process. If I’m writing from a certain character’s point of view, I pretend that I’m an actor in a movie who is playing that part. That makes it easier to make the character seem more real.

For example, if the character is a well-trained warrior, they’re going to be analytical and cautious when viewing their surroundings. If a character has OCD, they’re not going to trot out of the house without checking all the locks twice and making sure the stove is off.

If you write a character often, they become real in the sense that you kind of feel the story writing itself sometimes. If you try to write something in that’s totally out of character you might hear them say, “Uhm, no way in hell would I blindly charge into a guarded keep in a half-assed rescue attempt. I’m smarter than that.”

Sure, I’ve seen things in the ‘real world’ that remind me of my characters: hot pink rain boots that Janice might wear, a book you might catch Yoh reading. Have I actually tried *purchasing* these things with the intention of giving them to my characters? The answer is a resounding NO.

I once found an inexpensive wall hanging that weirdly matched the description of one on a character’s bedroom wall. I paid $3.50 for it and kept it because of the cool coincidence. Not once did I think that the character would show up to claim it.

Frankly, I think that LKH is lying to make herself seem like a more involved author. The evidence of her connection with her characters is proven through their degradation in the series, not by her claim that she almost buys them presents. If she were truly that in tune with her characters, there wouldn’t be a fuss over Anita turning in to a Vampire Humper in the first place.

This thread actually reminds me of a conversation I had with Terri Pray. She suggested authors do RPGs, because it helps with characterization.

I think that makes sense—my husband does live action roleplaying, and they actually have penalties for breaking character. Not easy when events tend to go for about four days.

Gosh, I can’t wait to get back to my laptop.

I recently took part in a workshop about music and creativity, and the presenter mentioned theta brain waves. When you are taking a shower, or driving a car, or doing the dishes, you are engaged in the activity but only minimally so. The brain shuts down the most active centers of reality-based interaction and basically zones out. I get most of my biggest creative jumps when I take a shower—something about the water noise, the lack of children, the gauranteed alone time. My brain zones out, and the creativity begins.

So when I read this about theta waves, I wondered if that’s why authors claim that the characters take on a life of their own and start to make decisions that stray from the outline. My current heroine is actually a very naughty liar in the skin of a wholesome blind girl—didn’t realize that until I started her. Part of it is the context of the story and trying to make something that stands out successfully as an MS, but the other part of it is being able to successfully access the unconscious level of creativity.

If you buy your characters Christmas presents, you’re crazy. If you just listen more closely to the voices in your head, maybe you’re better in tune with theta waves than other folks.

“I’m SOOOO glad to know I’m not the only one out there who has to learn about her characters as she writes.”

I’m so glad I read this. I didn’t buy Christmas presents for my characters, and they don’t live in real time for me, but I don’t know jack about them until I start typing. One of them “came out” the other night to me! Imagine my surprise. They come to life for me as I write, and I generally go back at the end to make sure they are consistent, because they’ve certainly become richer by the end.

One thing that really pisses me off though is writers and fans who go on about characters as though they are real, “claiming” them as their own man-tale, etc. I’m just grouchy that way.

In regards to the shocking spelling, LKH posted on her blog some time ago (last year?) that she suffered from dyslexia and her daughter had a problem with transposing numbers.

It doesn’t give her any lattitude, though. A good copy editor would have sorted the word stew before it ever got to print.

They come to life for me as I write, and I generally go back at the end to make sure they are consistent, because they’ve certainly become richer by the end.

Ditto, that. I always double-check and go back and sometimes smooth it out, so that a quirk a character revealed on page 188 is consistent from the beginning.

My characters do a alot of crazy things, but my subconscious is cool like that. The only time a character was ever real to me was when I was on acid, but then again, the ceiling was raining stars.

Love this thread.

My characters definitely come to life and do things on their own.  Which is a good thing because there are times I’m not sure how I’m really going to find my conclusion (really find it versus the stuff I wrote in the proposal/outline that sold it).  Sometimes things happen I didn’t plan at all – like in Goddess of Light my pretend secondary characters decided to have a pretend romance I had no clue was going to happen, pretend or otherwise.  But I understand that those secondary characters are, indeed, PRETEND.  I have yet to see any gods or goddesses walk the streets of Tulsa.  Queens, sure, but that’s another kind of story.

I do like it when fans write and want to know stuff about characters like they’re real and have kept on living and loving after The End.  It makes me feel like I’ve done my job.  Plus, books I’m writing or reading often put me in the Book Work.  Know what I mean?  When you feel like you’re walking around in that author’s world?  I know it’s not real, and it doesn’t last, but I like it.  For instance – over the holidays I painted my bedroom and master bathroom while I listened to all three of Nora’s vamp books on CD.  It made the painting decidedly more enjoyable and made me feel like I was entering Geall every time I walked in my room.  Seems weird now, but it was great fun then. 

And I don’t think LKH is lying about the Christmas present thing.  I think she’s bat shit crazy.

Well, crap.  I meant Book World, not Book Work.  Sorry.  I even proofread.

As a writer, are your characters real? How real?

Real enough that they bitch and moan if I don’t write the story EXACTLY how they envision it.

Do they tell you what to do once you’ve created them?

More like, if I DON’T do what they want, they threaten me with writer’s block.

Is there a moment when they take control of the story and you follow them as they lead the way to the end?

Yep. That’s the cool part.

And what’s on their Amazon Wish List?

HELL’S BELLES, of course. ;-)

Music is pretty huge for me too.

Oh, absolutely. Certain music sets the mood perfectly when I need to channel specific characters. The incubus Daunuan, for instance? His theme is Depeche Mode’s “Pimpf.” (And, er, all of FALLEN by Evanescence.) Music is crucial.

Visualization plays a huge role too. I sometimes “talk out” a scene before I write it. (Maybe I’m just crazy.)

My friend and crit partner, Elaine Corvidae (a very kickass writer) does something pretty cool after she finishes a book. She will post her “soundtrack”, everything she listened to while she wrote it. Sometimes she even goes chapter by chapter, which allows her readers to connect with her on another level.

Having witnessed the freaky Tarot reading Cat received—or was it Talia who actually got read, Cat?—all I can say is, that character certainly seemed real at the time.  (Cat (and/or Talia)—he will NEVER hurt you again!  Only I’ve read the next 2 stories and I know that’s not true.  He just keeps on being a jerk.  Sorry.) 

I had another author friend tell a story about getting a Tarot reading with her husband and the reader took her to task about cheating on her husband, even describing the man she was supposedly having an affair with.  You guessed it—she described the hero of Jan’s current work-in-progress. 

I steer clear of people who can look into my noggin, thanks.  There’s stuff in there that should never see the light of day, such as my first completed novel.  Shudder.

And I agree that when the characters ‘take over,’ it’s often the subconscious stepping in and saying, “No, you’ve already set up that this guy wouldn’t react like this.  Try this instead.”  And by golly, it often seems to work.  It’s a good thing when it happens, too.  As I was writing Pandora’s Box, it became clear that my hero had to die.  Had to.  Unavoidable.  Made writing the happily-ever-after ending a wee bit challenging.

Luckily the characters figured it out and it all turned out all right.  Smart buggers, they are.  Er.  I mean, I am.  Yeah, that’s the ticket.

Writing is a process that, to this day, utterly mystifies me.  I’ll start out with some vague notion of plot and character, then—voila!—when I sit down at the keyboard, the story almost seems to write itself.  It skitters off in directions I hadn’t planned. 

And, yes, certain characters seem to get under my skin.  I have no idea why or how that happens—some weird Pygmalion thing, I guess.  In fact, my ex-husband (emphasis on the EX) once claimed I was uttering a man’s, who happened to be a character’s, name in my sleep.  Truth be told, though, my ex was a jealous, abusive shit who was convinced I drew all my stories from life.  Yikes!  Talk about not getting it…

I suspect that occasionally when writers (even rank amateurs) try to properly describe what goes on in our heads, we tend to get a little colorful. It’s what we do. Most of us do realize when we start to sound a little odd. Well, with the apparent exception of LKH.

For example, I was working on a story set in the late 1800’s in the Ottoman Empire. The first step for me is a sort of narrative outline and lots of character notes. I got so obsessed over the possibilities and back-story of one of the secondary characters that I had a hard time focusing on the main story. I finally had to write all those ideas down just to get them out of my head.

But explaining it like that really doesn’t quite convey the vividness of my thoughts at the time. So when I explained it to my daughter (and sometime writing partner), I said:
“Harry kept dragging me off to the side and insisting on telling me about his life. I couldn’t get any work done. So I told him, ‘Listen, if I promise to get your story straight next, will you leave me alone and let me get back to getting your buddy Khalid to his happily-ever-after?’ And Harry said, ‘Why, yes, that would be fine.’”

I have seen things in stores and thought, “Hey, that’s something Emelia (or Gerard or etc.) would like.” I think this sort of thing adds dimension to the character.

But I have never actually picked anything up and started to the cash-register with it.

I’ve always assumed that when other authors talk about “characters getting away from them”, that they are writers who work from outline and/or their writing is essentially plot-driven. As opposed to writing organically, or being character- or dialogue-driven, both of which are more my style.  I’ve never had the sense of characters getting away from me or taking control, because they already are in control, if you will.  They’re what got me started writing that story.  If they don’t feel real by the end of the first few thousand words I write about them, the story probably isn’t going to work.  (Of course, the characters in my first book ARE real, so that’s a different story.)

Anyway, since so many other writers have gotten involved in this fascinating conversation, I am just throwing that out there—I am curious now if my assumption was correct.  When you say the characters get away from you, are you trying to make your story follow your initial plot/outline, and the characters take it another direction?  Or those of you who write organically, that is can’t outline worth a fig like me, still have the same experiences?

I’m an organic writer, which sounds so much jazzier than seat-of-the-pants.

But whether it’s a detailed outline, an overview, a vague map or a let’s just get in the car and drive process, characters are likely to take a direction unplanned. That’s a good thing.

So say, you’re sending your heroine to the store to buy bread, and she ends up on a plane for St. Bart’s. If you yank her back to the market, you might miss something that adds juice to the story. On the other hand, if going to the market is essential, you have to KNOW, and back she goes. No sun and surf for her. It comes down, I think, to knowing the character and the story well enough to make that decision. More than knowing, particularly in the early stages, but trusting—your characters, your own skill, and the vision that evolves from that.

Probably I’m going along to St. Bart’s. They have bread there, too.

I’m just so pleased that you (Nora Roberts) are an organic writer, I can’t tell you.  I always assumed you must be an outliner because you are so productive and I’ve always been so convinced outliners must have somehow mastered the trick to make writing more efficient.

I agree with you about the St. Barts/Market, and when to know when to go with St. Barts and when to realize it’s a red herring…it’s hard to describe the balance, because it’s something you just have to DO without thinking about it too much.  You go with your characters, but you keep a guiding hand on your story, too.  Because the characters are living their lives (back to the “real” question!), but you’re telling their story.  Well, that probably doesn’t quite describe it the way I want, but it’s something like that.  It can be very hard to describe the writing process!

I like calling myself an organic writer instead of a “pantser”!  Thanks, Nora.

I, too, count myself on the organic side of the spectrum.  I usually have a decent sense of what I’m doing for the next few thousand words, and maybe a very general idea of what’s happening in the rest of the book, but that’s as far as it goes.  I’m rather surprised that, for the book I’m hoping to propose to my editor next, I actually have a half-page outline.  For me, that’s impressive detail.

Where do I sign up to be a Nora Roberts character?

I heard they have a great benefits package. Better than those man-titty models.

In the mannerpunk genre, the characters have to be strong enough to carry off the entire book, since the plot (as the lovely Ellen Kushner once described it) exists only to give the characters something interesting to talk about.  Sometimes it’s like an interviewing process.  A prospective character will simply walk into the office in my head, hands me his resume, and attempts to convince me of why I should let him join this troupe.  If I like what I see, I’ll start asking him questions.  Quite often anything I need for a story is already there in the character’s own personality and background.  I’ve stopped asking myself where they come from; I’m just glad when they’re there.

Strong characters to me equal strong individuals, to the degree that if there’s an unattributed line of dialogue somewhere, I want my reader to know simply by the statement and style of the language exactly which character spouted out that particular line.  In my mind, I really do see them as individuals, and so in that respect I do have a great deal of personal affection for them.  I know how any of them would respond in any given situation, which occasionally results in minor story details being re-written because a particular character, “realistically”, would not do something.  If I’ve planned for a particularly cautious character to explore an abandoned mine without assistence or equipment, that character’s going to balk; she’s not going in there without a rope and a flashlight and a hard hat and a weapon of some sort, and she’s going to tell someone else where she’s headed first.  She’ll dig in her heels until I either allow her to make her preparations or until I select another, more spontaneous character to do the exploring instead.  Sending in a new character means the scene suddenly takes on a whole new of motivations (if Ms. Caution wanted to check that mine for safety, then Ms. Spontaneous may be there only to see if the legendary Fire Ruby is down there so that she can pawn that sucker and live sweet for the rest of her life) and may result in a whole new outcome, sending ripples throughout the rest of the book—ripples I may not have intended and will have to adapt to my own ends.  In that respect, I suppose my characters -do- run the show.  They must of course do whatever I tell them, but I, in turn, have to play fair.

LKH’s statement—that she can’t bear to kill them off and that she even thinks of lovely gifts for them—echoes about one creepy-baby-step away from the way I view my own characters.  I sincerely hope that LKH was joking when she said that she often found herself on the verge of -paying- for the gift before she realised the recipient doesn’t exist.  If I’m at the mall and see something that ‘looks totally like something [fill in character] would wear’, they get it in the story, not in the store.  My credit card balance prefers it that way.  As for killing off characters . . . meh.  Sometimes you gotta.  Consider them sacrifices to the Plot-God.

Having read through all the posts here, the only thing I can think is,  if the bad guy doesn’t do bad things, like kill cats, how do we know he’s the bad guy? ‘Cause the author says so? Yeah, THAT’S exciting.

When I write novels I often come up with a sound track of specific songs to help the voice along. And I do think knowing the character is vital to writing an engaging story. But that’s about as real as it gets for me.

Nora, thanks for chiming in, I’ve always been curious about how you work.

Since I write historical fiction and the characters are based on historical figures, they are real.  When I look at the history of the time periods that I write about and examine what character A did to B, it’s very easy to “get into the character’s head” and determine what would have been a very logical reaction on B’s part.  Often the result I come up with fits the historical record. 

I tend to write about time periods that are not well known in mainstream historical fiction.  I load up on research, make sure I have the historical facts right, but I build character profiles and show their emotions based on my thoughts.  In my head, my characters are alive and thriving.  If they had an Amazon wish list, it would be very long as most of the available items weren’t invented during their time period, and I suspect they’d be more than curious.

Besides this being both the most interesting and informative thread I’ve read in a while, I just want to say that thanks to you bitches, I had the wierdest dream last night.  People were being turned into giant Ken and Barbie dolls in a giant machine not unlike that used to make the Cyberpeople on Dr. Who.  Remaining humans and a cast of muppets were fighting to try to save humankind.  It was freaky.

Of course, I woke up before it got very far, because it’s not real. 

But curses to you all for putting that in there for my subconscious to pull out in the middle of the night.

What Nora said. I agree with Racyli too, the characters reveal themselves to me in action, as I write. Sometimes when a story isn’t moving forward it’s because the characters aren’t who I thought they were. Wrong occupation, wrong something. Once I correct that, the story barrels ahead.

As far as the control thing, well, characters dictate the story in that you’re bound by story logic. If you have X type of character, there are things they will and won’t do. If the plot calls for them to do something they normally wouldn’t you got some ‘splaining to do. Some heavy-duty motivation has to be provided.

I don’t know what’s in their pockets but I do know what they like, what they’d wear. For instance, I had two covers from Cerridwen for Yule Be Mine. The first one, I looked at and thought, “Jordan would never wear that dress.” The second one, the heroine’s wearing fishnet stockings. Perfect!

I do know what my characters have in their pockets. I know what’s in their top dresser drawers—at least I do by the end of the discovery draft. Doesn’t mean the reader needs to know, but it’s part of my process.

Still not buying them presents.

Dear Nora:

Buy me some damn gloves already. Geez, woman.

- Eve

I was sent the link to this site by one of my beta? readers. She’s also quite excellent at catching grammar errors and spelling gaffs. I’d be lost without her! So. This thread brought up two issues for me.

1. Is is legal to post in the same thread as Nora Roberts, MJD, et al while still waiting for my first response from a publisher? (I, obviously decided it was.)

2. My characters. For me they are real in the sense that the story is theirs. They don’t take over so much as they stop…period, if the don’t like what I’m writing. Sometimes, I’ll sit down and write a scene and my main characters won’t do another thing until I take it out.

I know their names, birthdates, relatives, and how they got to where they are. Beyond that, I’m watching a movie in my head and trying to tell people about it. It makes sense that I don’t know what is in their pockets since I don’t usually know what’s in my own! But I do know what music they would listen to if they were real. What their favorite time of day is and that one of them will not ever willingly eat celery and another won’t touch carrots. Makes for an interesting salad if nothing else.

I’m not too interested in the romantic myths about authorship, but that said I do like my characters, a lot. I fill in character worksheets for the protagonists, but I don’t really go back to them (except to check up on details like age and eye colour) and I don’t mind if they develop in a different direction. But they certainly don’t get to intervene in my careful plotting of the story. I’ll let them fill in the blanks though, the small things they do and say. Conversations especially tend to move in a different direction than I anticipated, but I think that has to do with my associative writing rather than the characters per se. Sometimes they react differently emotionally to events and to one another than I envisioned, and that’s ok as long as they can still plausibly go through what I’ve planned for them.
Lately I’ve been playing all of my characters as Sims. It’s not really “character study” and I don’t expect it to be helpful (they might do something that gives me an idea for the plot, but given the limitations of Sims, it’s not too likely…) - it’s rather unhelpful, actually, stealing a lot of time from my writing. But it is a sign of how much I like the characters and want to be with them even when I’m not writing. I just hope the rather generic Sims won’t “erase” the more nuanced and individual characters by the same name I had in my head before…

I was sent the link to this site by one of my beta? readers. She’s also quite excellent at catching grammar errors and spelling gaffs. I’d be lost without her! So. This thread brought up two issues for me.

*puffs out chest (what there is of it)*

That’s me!! I started out being sorta polite but gradually descended into the realm of the Ruthless, Brutal Comma Patrol. I figured I wasn’t doing Kathy any favors by being polite- her job was to be creative, mine was to use my very UNcreative brain to sweat the small stuff for her.

Anyway, at the Daytona RTcon, writers kept commenting on their characters taking over a story or telling them what they wanted. As one of the few non-writers there, I just couldn’t wrap my mind around that. So, at one of the Friday panels, I finally asked what they meant. Basically, they said that, once you really got to know your characters, it would be no different than recognizing that your best friend would never take a certain action or say a certain thing. So that made sense.

Now, after reading through this thread I think I’m REALLY understanding. As I stated above, I’m not a writer- I seem to be lacking that creative gene. But because the entire creative writing process is so foreign to me, I find it endlessly fascinating and I want to thank all of you that have posted on this topic. It’s been an amazing glimpse into your magical minds!

I like to tell stories.  A scene appears.  I have no idea where the scene comes from or what it means but if it intrigues me, I start to write about these characters and how they reach that particular scene.  During the “process,” it feels as if they are doing it on their own while I, the writer, am just filling in the sensory details.  Some people call it channeling; others call it organic writing.

I do get into arguments with “them” when the direction of the story gets stuck.  This is when I tell people that the characters are being obstinate.

I also have this thing about secrets and digging them up, so every one of my book is about me revealing my characters’ secrets.  So spy-fi is perfect for this hobby of mine ;-).  I must say that my characters always reveal their secrets to me and I never plan what, when, or how.  This is my secret formula—they don’t tell me, so I keep writing till I find out.  If I already know from the onset, I get bored with the story.

This is NOT a good way to write when your editors demand a synopsis/outline!  And I don’t think they’d accept mountains dropping on my characters.  Or a giant comet falling out of the sky (my favorite insertion in the middle of my synopsis).

That said, I’ll confess that:

1) I see fictional characters

2) I killed a mongoose once

3) I hate shopping for other people

4) Of course my heroes are real sex machines, what are you talking about?

First of all, I’m not a romance reader or writer, although I do like me some smut.  I’ll write relationships but they’re sort of incidental to the blood’n'gore’n'horror’n'magic I like to write.

That being said, my characters seem extremely real to me.  I’ll be wandering around somewhere and think, ‘oh, that guy/girl looks like so-and-so.’  I daydream at work (I muck stalls in a horse barn, plenty of time to daydream) about what my chars do in their daily lives, although part of this is because I use a lot of them to RP with a good friend of mine.  We often discuss how real they seem to us, more real than the majority of people we meet in our daily lives.  And the phenomenon of the characters taking over the stories (or the RP in some cases)... 

Now, having said that, I should point out that I am somewhat of a recluse; I have social anxiety and depression, and I just plain don’t like most people.  So maybe that has something to do with it; I never quite grew out of the imaginary friend/imaginary world stage.

Besides, my demons and angels and elves and mages are so much more entertaining than listening to the latest my-boyfriend-sucks sob story.

However, lest you think I’m completely mad, I do know that they aren’t going to walk up to me one day and introduce themselves as my characters come to life.  As cool as that would be.  I think part of it is that, for me, it makes me feel better.  It makes me feel creative when I think something up that makes me laugh and can attribute it to a character, because my characters are a lot cooler than me (well, I think so anyway).

Also, in regards to the stories themselves, mine almost never turn out the way I first imagined them.  They begin as expected, and then the characters start doing their own thing.  And basically, I just go with it.  I rarely outline unless I really need to remember details, and even then it’s a quick scribble along the lines of “Z & D big boom, D fall, Z catch, torn between D and god, ‘let him fall’, dark aura”.  Half the time, I look back on my notes some months later and just giggle because they make no sense when I’m not in go-mode.

Anyway, before I start really babbling, I shall stop myself.  Just wanted to add my two cents, as this is a topic I often think/talk about.  Ciao!

I once had a tarot card reading that had bugger-all to do with my life, but was a perfect reading of the character whose book I was pitching the next day at conference.

She gets her own tarot readings.  She has her own MySpace.  Any minute now we’re going to split down the middle and become two separate people.

I’ll be the one rocking gently in the corner, gibbering to myself.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA, Cat, I have done that.  But I got revenge.  I put the tarot reading into the book!

I am a *very* unpublished writer. I’m just getting back into it all. I always hear the voices of the characters that I create. That started way back in H.S. At one time I thought every writer had that happen and it didn’t seem all that weird to me.

I write a small outline of what I want to write a book about. After I get a general idea of who my main characters are I will look through my baby name books to find their names. I know when I find them. I will then start writing, but at some point I will also do a character questionnaire I copied out of a very helpful writing book I borrowed from the library years ago.

I’ve written a few books in my time *wink*, and I’ve always felt a connection to my characters.

But in 2006, I wrote a 4-book futuristic romance series and the connection I felt to those characters surpasses anything I’ve ever experienced.

I wrote the books in such a way that all characters play a part in all books - although a main ‘couple’ is more prominent in each.  I write from the POV of all of them (Not headhopping) but one scene is in one character, the next scene another, and the next another.

And the whole bit about the characters taking over?  Absolutely! I am a pantser, I don’t outline.  I go where the story leads.  And I trust it.

In the third book of the series, I found myself writing a scene with one of the male characters.  Now, this wasn’t ‘his’ book.  His had been the previous book… but this scene just… happened.  Even after I wrote it, I stared at it going “Ok, what do I do with THAT?”  I had no idea where the plot was going… but I left it.

My question was answered in the fourth book.  I wrote a particular bit… stop… stared… read it again… and proclaims… “OH!  THAT was what Victor was doing!” 

Now that the series is complete, I do find myself missing them.  One character in particular.  Although I hadn’t intended for him to be more important than the other characters, by mid-way through the first book I knew that he alone was the glue and driving force of the entire series.  He grew right on my monitor.  He’s very, very real to me.

They effected me so much so that I am working on a new series.  While most of the previous characters will serve as secondaries in this series - my favorite - My Michael will be a main character again.

So, yeah… I understand the being wrapped up and taken over.  I understand the characters standing behind him as I type, whispering in my ear.  I understand them ‘fighting’ me when I think the book should go one way, and they say another.  My husband thinks I’m crazy at times - but I’ve met many a writer who ‘gets’ it.