Who's the Boss?

[Ghost]

I've heard people say their characters are in control. The characters are unruly dogs the writer tried to walk, and now a pack of energetic, opinionated mongrels drags the hapless writer up and down the streets.

I've heard of people making their characters perform. The characters are little puppets forced to carry out the writer's wishes. The plot requires the character to join the circus? That character better find his clown shoes or the writer will kill off his friends and family, one by one.

Alright, those are both exaggerations, but I wonder: are you at the mercy of your characters? Do you control their every move? Who is in charge of your story? I expect many writers fall between or use completely different plan of attack.

My main characters form around whatever situation I've imagined, or a fragment of that character comes to me and I try to uncover the story to go with it. If I try to take the story from the character or the character out of the story, what's left is awkward and limp. They influence each other too much. Because of that, I can't imagine forcing the narrative or being run roughshod over by my own creations.

I'm really curious about everyone's strategies for moving characters forward in the narrative. It's interesting to hear how different or similar our approaches are.

 

[Devor]

Who is in charge of your story?

When I write, I really don't feel like anything is optional. I've got a concept buried in my head somewhere, and everything in my pages of notes and story has been dictated by that concept. With everything, I feel that this is what's necessary to bring the elements together, and nothing else will do.

It's like I wrote the story in another lifetime, and I'm trying to remember how I did it.

That's how I feel when I write. The characters aren't in control, but neither am I.

 

[Caged Maiden]

When I create a character concept, I begin with a couple elements. Then, as I put the character through the wringer (because that's where I get my fun from), I get to know them better, and let them have a little control. However, as soon as a character's function is complete or they get boring, I get rid of them. All the more reason to keep the challenges coming!

 

[Penpilot]

Characters used to run rough shot over me, but I studied hard and learned all their little secret wants and desires, and in doing so, learned how to control them. I learned to build the maze called an outline and baited it with shinys to temp their souls and warp their desires. For the most part they do as I wish, but every so often, the temptations aren't enough. They'll turn left instead of right and find a secret path I never knew was there or an exit out of the maze I didn't know existed. Rebellious little shits.

 

[The Dark One]

Characters used to run rough shot over me, but I studied hard and learned all their little secret wants and desires, and in doing so, learned how to control them. I learned to build the maze called an outline and baited it with shinys to temp their souls and warp their desires. For the most part they do as I wish, but every so often, the temptations aren't enough. They'll turn left instead of right and find a secret path I never knew was there or an exit out of the maze I didn't know existed. Rebellious little shits.

Very similar to my method. I get to know my main characters really well at the very beginning - in fact, there will always be something about the plot's resolution inherent in the MC's native condition - and I percolate ideas about that character (and how they might contribute to plot, until one day I find myself writing an essay about the character. This is not part of the book - it's just a way of creating detail about the character which is already in my head when later writing the story. Some of the material may be mentioned but it doesn't need to be to have already served its purpose. You can't write wooden, one dimensional characters if you know them as well as you know your mates.

And yet, for all my careful planning, my characters constantly amaze me with their unanticipated antics. Sometimes I let them go where they want to go (within the lines of the story plan) but as often as not I drag them back to where they ought to be.

 

[Feo Takahari]

I'm not above changing a character's entire personality if I don't like how I'm writing him or her, but this means changing it in every single scene I've already written, and potentially changing the story arc if the character would no longer do or not do something. I guess that's still following the character's will--it's just doing so in a more labor-intensive fashion than usual.

 

[Kit]

I am a newspaper reporter. I can decide which witnesses to interview and how to word the copy, but I got ZERO control over events and even less over personalities. I'm their bitch.

 

[gavintonks]

hahhahh very well said, but I like to look through the eyes of my characters to see how they react and I believe they are responsible for the story as it is their personality and likeability or hateability that engages the reader with the story in the end

 

[Ophiucha]

I'm very much in control of my characters. I'll completely alter or remove them if I feel it necessary, or condense two or three characters into one. I craft them very specifically for the purposes of the story I want to tell, which has its ups and downs. I find that it generally tells a better and more solid story... but it basically makes it impossible to write sequels or tell any other story with that character. To the point where if I change anything important about the world or the plot, I basically need to rewrite the entire character as well. So, yeah, ups and downs, but I like the end product better when I'm in control.

 

[JCFarnham]

I find it rather bizarre when authors act as though the characters are in charge for one specific reason:

You, the author, are by definition in control. If you "aren't" then you're not doing it right. You are God in your created world, you can give life, or take life away, you can lop out bits of peoples personalities and replace then with something new.

I completely understand where the characters-in-control mind set comes from (ie, creating something so real and instinctively knowing what that character would do) but to me - I'm not accusing any one don't worry - going that step further and acting as though they are genuinely alive...?

Anyway, if you (the general "you", not the specific) don't have control then I'm not sure whether you have a good enough hang on the craft.

 

[Kit]

I find it rather bizarre when authors act as though the characters are in charge for one specific reason:

You, the author, are by definition in control. If you "aren't" then you're not doing it right. You are God in your created world, you can give life, or take life away, you can lop out bits of peoples personalities and replace then with something new.

I completely understand where the characters-in-control mind set comes from (ie, creating something so real and instinctively knowing what that character would do) but to me - I'm not accusing any one don't worry - going that step further and acting as though they are genuinely alive...?

Anyway, if you (the general "you", not the specific) don't have control then I'm not sure whether you have a good enough hang on the craft.

Art- like religion- is subjective to the point of being defined by subjectivity. God (or whatever equivalent you recognize, if you recognize it/him/her/them at all) comes to you the way it comes. Art comes to you the way it comes.

 

[JCFarnham]

Art- like religion- is subjective to the point of being defined by subjectivity. God (or whatever equivalent you recognize, if you recognize it/him/her/them at all) comes to you the way it comes. Art comes to you the way it comes.

Even so, the point of being an author (or painter, or musician, or...) is the act of creation. You decide what you do. However you choose to embellish that point, you do what you do because you want to do it. How we human beings explain things - because we do like to explain and catagorise don't we? Human nature. - doesn't change anything.

What I'm saying is the explanation/view point is the subjective bit. Being in control the creation is the fundimental core of art (even if you're on commission, you're still the one doing the work.)

The art controlling you just doesn't logically make sense to me.

 

[Kit]

Even so, the point of being an author (or painter, or musician, or...) is the act of creation. You decide what you do. However you choose to embellish that point, you do what you do because you want to do it. How we human beings explain things - because we do like to explain and catagorise don't we? Human nature. - doesn't change anything.

What I'm saying is the explanation/view point is the subjective bit. Being in control the creation is the fundimental core of art (even if you're on commission, you're still the one doing the work.)

The art controlling you just doesn't logically make sense to me.

Where does artistic inspiration come from? Where does artistic talent come from?

I like piano; wish I could play, and maybe if I worked my tail off I could eventually learn to be competent at it.

I like ballet; it just comes.

Control is limited when it comes to art. Regardless of which art forms I like, and would like to do, I don't get to choose which ones just fountain out in an organic and inspired way versus which ones I need to grind at in order to produce a minimal level of dexterity. (And sure, the nuances of the "fountaining" arts take work to perfect, but it often doesn't seem like work.... and anyhow, it's pretty damn good even without perfecting)

Art is not a math equation- the more I try to control it, the less artistic (and crappier) it becomes. It's always best when it just gushes.

Your mileage may vary as always.

 

[JCFarnham]

We probably just have varying definitions of "control".

I'm not talking about "forcing" art, that's something entirely different (and what you're on about). When I write fiction, or compose music what I'm inspired to do is what I do. Again I don't classify that as, say, my instruments controlling what I'm playing. Or... my characters being in control.

I'm still in control of them (or, to extend the comparision again, the intruments), and inspiration is separate to that - An indescribable thing that happens in the moment and informs, but honestly isn't in the driving seat. I could ignore it - that's my control as an artist.

But I'm not in my opinion being forced into doing anything. You know?

 

[Steerpike]

I find it rather bizarre when authors act as though the characters are in charge for one specific reason:

You, the author, are by definition in control. If you "aren't" then you're not doing it right.

Bingo.

The statement that the characters are control and are running away with the story is shorthand for something else, either a lack of discipline, or a conscious decision to let your own subconscious run with the story in whatever direction it seems to you the characters would take it. But you're in control. You can write the story how you want and make the characters do whatever you want. Even if you let your subconscious roam free and just follow wherever the writing takes you, you're only fooling yourself if you think that you can't stop it any time you want.

 

[Christopher Wright]

I describe myself as a "Literary Calvinist." All characters are pre-ordained to do my bidding. That said, I have been known to change my mind, frequently, forcing them to change as well.[1]

--------
[1] I am an evil, capricious deity. John Calvin would not approve.

 

[Benjamin Clayborne]

I think maybe it's a way of saying that characters seem to take on a life of their own--as an author, you can let them go off and do things and you seem to have no control over it... while you're writing.

But then there comes a time when you have to step back, pull out your axe, and chop that character to bits and start over.

 

[Feo Takahari]

I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm not an inherently creative person. Everything I write is in some way stolen from other sources (and I disagree with Picasso on this one--many of the artists I steal from created rather than stole.) I can rewrite a character when I really have to, but if I don't let them follow their base characterization in unexpected directions, my plots will turn out cliched, since my original idea of them is always cliched.

 

[The Dark One]

I think some of you are being wilfully semantic here.

Of course the characters are under our control in the end, from an editing perspective, but I took the point to be about the inspiration of story at any particular moment. In my opinion, you can only have control over that in retrospect. You don't generate artistic ideas with the conscious rational mind - art comes from the unconscious/subconscious/id-state and is then refined and translated by the rational mind. The unconscious etc mind is by definition not inherently controllable but that is the exciting well into which we dip when in the muse.

When I'm deeply into the muse, it's like watching a movie and the scenes just pour through my fingers onto the laptop screen. Honestly, I can read back over something I've written and hardly remember the process (or what it produced) at all. It's almost as though I'm a reader - getting to enjoy the work for the first time without knowing what's coming.

When dipping into that well of possibilities it really can happen that characters do things I hadn't consciously thought of previously. This won't change the plot in any fundamental way because I've always mapped all the important parts of the plot before I start, but it can certainly pile on layers of extra texture and meaning.

In every one of my books, I've realised something profoundly important when writing the last chapter, which was always lying dormant in the genes of the story and makes perfect sense. It doesn't really change the ending but lets me understand it in a whole new way I'd never adverted to in the planning.

 

[Ophiucha]

You see, even if we stretch what we are talking about to include that definition, I still don't think I fall into that. Of course I am occasionally struck with a spot of inspiration, but the way I craft my stories and the ideas I get from my inspiration is certainly quite calculated. The only time I've ever read over and not known, nearly word for word, what was written down on the page was when I found the old .doc file of the first novel I ever wrote, back in 6th grade, while looking through my backup drive.

To take a recent example of one of my projects, #soundworld, I feel like everything in it serves a distinct purpose. I said to myself, firstly and before anything else, that I wanted to create a world where the only form of magic was sound. How did I come to this? I think I was talking about bards in Dungeons & Dragons with my husband for a bit. How did I decide on some of the creatures of my world? I studied evolutionary hypotheses (particularly, what do scientists believe will inherit the Earth after us) and extrapolated. My cultures, though not based on any world culture in particular, are crafted around interests and ideals. My characters all serve some distinct purpose or reflect some character trait I find lacking in my fantasy fiction. The only divine inspiration I had for Kori was "there really aren't enough single father protagonists in fantasy", so bam, single father protagonist.

In White Moon, another WIP, even though I wrote the scenes and the emotions on the fly (since it's historical fantasy, a lot of the events were sort of predetermined), they are all based firmly on my deep understanding of the characters which I established beforehand. Being struck by inspiration, for me, is suddenly being able to tie together a couple of loose strings. Realizing how the pieces come together. If I am suddenly considering some new idea for the story or the character or the world, something radical, I tend to stop writing for a minute to figure out how to include it before proceeding, I don't just start typing away.

I don't think it extends how long it takes me to write a story. I can still do by 1,666 words/day for NaNoWriMo most years, and I can do 1,000 words/day during the other eleven months without fail. If I am really in love with a character or the story, I can do 2k or 3k a day on the first draft. But I am still a generally calculated writer. I don't let my subconscious write the story, I let it tell me ideas and I put them into consideration.