How much control do you actually have over your story?

Isn't that why we write? To discover rather than invent? Maybe not for some, but it works that way for me, especially when I deliberately try to create a conflict. Suddenly something pops out that was never there, and it's better than anything I could have done deliberately.

I had this happen with the relationship between my MC and his main antagonist. Having read "Writing The Blockbuster Novel" I remembered that Zuckerman advises close relationships between principal characters--family if possible. So this guy suddenly discovers that the antag--the man he hates more than any other--is his father. Whoa! Stuff comes ripping at me and the whole picture changes.

I write to discover the story that wants to be told. Took a few failed attempts to figure out all the tricks it takes to know when I'm writing myself into a corner and backtrack early enough, but I think it was well worth it. There's nothing that makes me happier or more thrilled than writing something into my wip file, and realizing I've just stumbled upon something new and crucial to my plot / about my characters. This is why I write... and why I love it so much.

I was reluctantly forced to pick somewhere in between because the other too choices were too extreme. I believe I have control over my story, but its direction is constrained by the characters I create and the part of the story I've already told. I can't have my shy character suddenly singing karaoke at a bar for no reason. But I created that shy character so it's still up to me what she does and how she feels.

It's definitely only my finger hovering over the delete key, but I find it works much better when I let my characters do what they want to do. I've often been surprised, horrified, amused, and annoyed by what they decided to do (not to mention a little worried for my sanity): but for the most part it works better when I just sit back and let it happen without much of a struggle.

I can always clean it up in the editing process.

My selection would have been, "I just transcribe. The story writes itself."

I am just an empty vessel through which the story floats. I'm the fingers behind the telling. (automaton typer.)

I pretty much know the story I want to tell when I start. That is not to say that my characters do not surprise me. They do, and for the most part, I am willing to let them run free and follow where they go.

However, I also believe that someone has to be in charge of the reins, or else chaos could ensue - and no one would get home safe in the end.

In short, it's a balance of both for me.

I Love it when I'm a hundred pages into my MS and discover that my whole outline and outlook has changed! It proves what I know deep in my soul; writing a piece of (good) fiction can't be planned it burst free of restrictions, it just happens, it's a force of nature...that...must...be told in it on way and at its own pace. I Love it!

I find it very fortunate that I seem to be on the sociopathic side of authors. There is never a "I like this character so much that I won't do X to them." Rather I have a moment of "I like this character so much I should really kill them tragically."

As for control in general, I have total. The writing style, the narrative the dialog, where it goes and how it gets there, is all me. At least, until I get famous enough to hire out ghost writers.

But don't think I'm a "control freak" for it. It's simply my style to plan it all out beforehand. To write and graph little arcs and bullet-point-laden outlines and meditate in silence over something before I write it. That's how I do it. When I did it the other way around (namely "hey, I've a character! Lets get cracking!) then of course all the things you mentioned happened. Characters would veer, plots would twist and things would change in ways I didn't "expect." Given that people are fairly complicated creatures and our subconscious is very powerful, what would you expect?

But it's true, I don't believe in any external force writing the story. Everything you write comes from you. If you wish to pin it on bearded-old-sky-men or nine scantily dressed women nobody is going to blame you, though.

I am the storyteller, and my characters are extensions of my imagination. However, I don't dictate what they do or think or say. True characters emerge from my consciousness and manifest on their own. Still, they come from me. So in a way, there is this God complex -- I created them, but they have free will.

Mmmm...sorry, I can't buy this stuff. I'm making it up. I can delete at will. I can make characters that do whatever I want. I can change the storyline halfway through, if I feel like it.

I'm writing the story.

I let the story play itself out in my mind and I basically just put it to words in the best possible way I can. Sometimes it doesn't work out right and I have to rewind the story and play it again using a little more control but most of the time, I let my characters tell the story. I never plan or use outlines to determine what's to happen next.

I find it more interesting to put myself in the readers' shoes when I write. Its like knowing someone is standing around the corner and they're about to jump out at you scaring your senseless. If you know they are there, it takes away the thrill of being scared. That's why I let them have the control during the first part of the writing process. After the rough draft is written, I know everything and can "suggest" to my characters something that would work better and I begin the editing process.

Even during editing though, I try not to take more control than I need to get the story out. I like working this way. It makes writing more like fun than work.

Amber

I'm more of a transcriber than an inventor. I do actively invent some things, but once you invent a few things, the rest of it flows as a consequence of those things. If you have a group of people with certain dispositions, and the mechanics of a world are set in a certain way, and people have access to what they have access to, and the characters have the goals they have - there are effects that necessarily follow.

Sometimes it's a case of realising that, given your world is the way it is, something is possible - and once you know it's possible, you realise that, no matter how much you might not like it, it has to happen, because it's just that interesting.

I don't get bent out of shape if my characters do something unexpected, in fact I'm thrilled when they do. It means they're 'real' and have a life of their own.
Linnea

I like Carogirls' answer. I am in control in that I create the characters..well most of them. Maybe I Lean more toward I have no control. My fingers just write. And I found some interesting things happening....I introduced new minor characters that were crucial to my story that I had no idea existed when I began. In fact they didn't show up until the third edit. And actually, even during my first draft, things happened I didn't even know were going to. I started with a simple idea...no outline. No nothing except a general idea of the plot. It developed into something more beautiful than I could have predicted or outlined. My fingers just typed and when I looked back, it was like..whoa. Huh. I love it!

Granted I've only completed one novel, but still. I love that way that works. I'm not sure I want to have control of my novel! I don't want it to feel structured or to change something that comes so naturally. That would totally ruin it and make it seem..forced. Readers would know that.

I set the stage and plot the bigger elements, and then the characters come along and do the rest. But right now, no one's having any luck. I don't know what "comes next," and my characters can't figure it out, either. It's making me very cranky, and I think they're tired of waiting for me to have some kind of epiphany. I keep throwing them into scenes to see if they can find the answer...

I'd say I have total control. While unexpected things happen, it's still me making the decisions, and they're my own words.

I have no control whatsoever over my characters, and I don't want any. I have control over the villains, plot, and world, and that's plenty to guide the story into going where it should. I set the stage, tell my characters what their goals are, and throw problems up in their path. The rest is up to them.

I know my characters well enough before I start writing to do a detailed outline (which I'm not above changing if they happen to defy my understanding of them at some point). My characters having free will is why my outlines usually list only the goal and obstacle(s) in a given scene, and don't say how it will be solved except for giving the eventual outcome. I also run through pivotal scenes in my mind before outlining to see the possible reactions of my characters (they don't always do the same thing when I'm actually writing, though).

I couldn't imagine having to actually think of every word I write, rather then just transcribing what my characters do and say. I've had stories where the characters weren't developed enough to act autonomously, and they've never gotten very far because writing like that is ridiculously hard compared to what I'm used to.

On the flip side, I have one story where the villain is a MC from one of my other books, and thus she's completely developed with a will of her own. I can't control her, and whether that story will ever be completed is very debatable precisely because I can't keep her from mucking up the plot horribly. Having both the villain and protags out of my control leaves me only the world and circumstances with which to control the story, and that may not be enough to get where I need it to go.

I have control over everything. Narration, etc.
At this moment I still have control over my characters, which I think shouldn't be the case.

Only now have they started offering me the story themselves. I think that's the way it should go.

As Hope to the Horizon mentioned, when you don't know the characters, it becomes hard to write the stories. You have to constantly think.
I think that's the stage I'm at.

I just haven't figure them out yet, I don't know them well enough.
But as soon as I do I bet they'll write the stories themselves. It will FLOW.
In that sense, I'm prepairing to become a slave of that flow. Of that current of my imagination.

I think that if you have ULTIMATE POWWAAAAAHHHH, it's very likely that you would prefer the story to write itself. It's less brusque and with less abrupt ups and downs in your thinking.

My reign as a god is ending. Which I think is lovely.

Of course deep down there, becoming completely non-poetic, I will always have total control.

I'm in control, I write every word. I am aware that some of the process isn't conscious but it's still 100% me.

A year ago I would have said I had total control. With most of the stories before then I felt like I could do whatever I wanted, and did. I didn't like the idea of causing a character harm? I didn't do it. I thought it'd be cool to add in a new element that was unrelated to everything else? I had at it. I didn't plot but in some ways that gave me more control. I could sit down and do whatever I felt like doing at the moment. Then I sat down one night and started to write a new story about a woman and a genie and that changed. This story did not go the way I wanted it to go, and yet when it was finished it was the best short story I'd written. The novel I began after that went the same. I thought I had the whole idea figured out from the start. Turned out the character I thought would be the main POV character died in the first chapter. The same thing has happened with the rest of the novel as well as two more short stories that I just completed. They just sort of came. Yeah, I thought about them but the answers to any problems I had didn't come in logical processions. They came in flashes in the middle of the night or while I was watching television with my family.

This is the first time I have understood what a writer says when they say that the story writes itself. Of course I know it all comes from me but it's so much more of an unconscious process now, and the stories are the best I've written in my life. I don't know if it's just a normal process of maturity for me (getting certain things ingrained so deep in my mind that they come naturally) or if it's because I changed genre. I'm inclined to go with the genre change in some ways. Before my stories were young adult or romance or attempts at being literary. Now I'm writing speculative fiction and part of me feels like the possibilities have freed my imagination. Anyway, I just wanted to share the experience of a writer who used to be totally in control and who now is more often along for the ride.

veinglory said:

I'm in control, I write every word. I am aware that some of the process isn't conscious but it's still 100% me.

Click to expand...

That's exactly how I feel. Sometimes the most important thing is to get the conscious side to pipe down so the subconscious can go to work, but it's all me.

This is one of those paradoxes. Yes, everything comes out of me. Does that mean I 'control" it? I don't think so.

For examples, my desires, appetites, and emotions are all from me. For that matter, so are my dreams. Does that mean I control them? I don't think so. Or I do, I do so in a different sense of "control" than the normal usage.

Mozart claimed that writing music was easy: all you had to do was scribble down what you were hearing in your head. But old Wolfgang never discussed the degree to which you could determine what was in your head in the first place.

Certainly when I consciously turn my attention to a situation or a kind of character I am steering my imagination toward something. But what my imagination does when we get there is usually something my conscious mind couldn't have, well, imagined...

Our language isn't really well-suited to discusing this, is it?