Misbehavin' characters

I've heard a lot of writers make this claim, that their characters "do their own thing." I can't say it's ever happened to me. I am the one in charge all the time. I do, however, have moments where my gut will suggest taking the story in a different direction, or twisting a character in a different way and more often than not, the instinct is a good one. Story and character creation is a very fluid process for me, subject to constant change. Despite the fact that I prefer to work from a general outline, I never know how one of my novels or characters will turn out until everything is done.

Beth

I wouldn't want to plan what my characters say ahead of time. I also don't think your characters are misbehaving at all. The fact that they are breathing throughout your work would make me think that you are on the right track. Conflict is good. It helps drive the story.

Some of the great writers on this board would probably tell you that your story and your characters should write themselves for you. Why fight it? Enjoy the ride. Good luck.




Mike

Obviously I'm the one doing the writing, but sometimes it doesn't feel that way, and yes, the characters do and say things that I didn't intend them to. Perhaps this is because I don't outline? It happens most when I'm completely immersed in what I'm writing, and in the personalities of the characters.

Personally, I don't worry about it. I wait until later drafts to make sure what the characters do and say works. This is partly because I know the characters better by then, and can judge the characterisation.

I agree. Let the characters say what they want to. It may be important, or the conversation could just go in circles and sound annoying. But at least you'd know, and you could get their bickering onto paper and be over with it. And if it's not good, you can always go back and change it. I've written so many scenes that I will probably never use for the same reasons, but I'm glad that I've explored other possibilities for the characters. It's great that they feel so alive to you!

This happened to me. I had a scene when my main character met up with her nemesis. She was supposed to back down from him but when I wrote it I realised that she wouldn't behave like that. It sent my story down a completely different way but it worked better.

It's very weird when it happens but it has several times.

And if it ever does degenerate into truly pointless bickering, you can always go back and boil that scene down to saying "At that point, it degenerated into truly pointless bickering," and then get on with the more interesting parts of your story.

You can be true to your characters and still maintain control, at least once you get to the rewrite stage. I'm not sure the rough draft stage is ever fully manageable, but maybe that's just me.

In real life, relationships tend to fall into stereotypical patterns unless and until some external factor breaks in to force one or more participants to take stock of what's going on in the relationship. If you as god/author introduce some external stimulus that explains why your MC is re-thinking how she relates to her sister, it will be perfectly natural for her to do so, and might even suggest an interesting subplot for your book. It needn't be a big factor, just something big enough to nudge the MC's thoughts in the right direction.

One of my characters took his pardon and left the story. I only half believed it that character sometimes have their own agenda. But after my character left I know better. It was quite a shock for me. I kept telling him that he should come back. He just wouldn't

*chains her characters down to be on the safe side*

Mine daren't leave

I am more likely to have characters I did not know about appear than for those already there to act very unexpectedly. Since you are outlining in detail before you write a chapter, you should not, I think, have so much trouble in controlling them.

If your characters would rather bicker than move the story forward, perhaps there isn't enough inherent conflict in the scene. You say they're not getting necessary information across. Who needs the information -- the characters, or the reader? If the characters are mouthpieces for an infodump, you may find it difficult to get the information across in a natural manner.

On the other hand, if it's information that the reader knows but the character doesn't (summation of previous events), you might be balking at repeating yourself.

This is all stuff that can be addressed in rewrites, though. I wouldn't worry too much about it at the moment.

My very first post and it's on something I love to talk about.

Vomaxx said:

I am more likely to have characters I did not know about appear than for those already there to act very unexpectedly.

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I, too, have this problem. Characters will just walk onstage without hi or hey to me and I'm always very sad when I have to ask them to leave. They definitely add something to the story but if I don't have enough room for them (i.e. limited word count) they get the axe.

As far as dealing with the arguing sisters. Something's gotta give. Being sisters, they should probably know each other well enough to know how the other is going to react. So if you have something that the characters need to discuss, one of them (or both) is going to have to go out of their way to avoid an argument. Maybe settle for them grumbling to themselves about the witchy way the other sister treated them or something like that.

I do believe, in one sense, that characters are real and are prone to do things according to how we created them. We create them to behave in a certain way. When we put them in challenging situations they're going to respond according to how we created them to respond. So even though we are the master of the domain (the storyworld) we, the writer, still have to operate in line with the rules we set up for said story world and the people that inhabit it.

Say you have a character who never fights but in once instance they do. There has to be a reason for this anomaly. They can't just fight because we need them to in order to advance or conclude the plot. The character or circumstances need to be developed in such away that the anomaly is acceptable to both the reader and the character. If this isn't done right, of course the character is balk in the form of the story coming out poorly written.

My thoughts. Hope it works out

I would let them fight and see where it goes but, on revision, look to redundancies and whether all of the back-and-forth is necessary. My characters have arrived and spoken without planning on my part, and often that has been for the best. But, sometimes, they have exchanges that sound real but take up far more paper than is required to get across what they mean to say. In that second pass, I prune their words down.

Tilly said:

*chains her characters down to be on the safe side*

Mine daren't leave

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Ah, but if I chained him down, it would be doom to his entire race!