How do you get your characters to write the story?

It will be interesting to see if anyone has a clue how this happens Why characters suddenly talk and act in a way we hadn't planned. I think part of it has to do with censorship. We're a bit selfconcious about how we write things down, aware that it's going to be read by someone else. Once we're free of that, it seems we free our characters as well.
Linnea

Bribe them with chocolate.

Before you go taking on a whole big honkin' novel, write a single short story with each of your characters.

Let the stories be completely separate from the novel. You'll develop a better understanding for each of them.

The stories don't ever need to be published; you're doing them as a "get acquainted" exercise. Six short stories will sharpen your writing craft, too.

You may eventually find that some of the writing you'll have in each story will creep into the novel.

Good luck!

I definitely feel free to talk when I write. Other than that, I have no clue how the characters start bossing me around. When I saw the title of this thread I wondered what everyone else would say too.
I know for me, when I'm thinking up a story I usually feel alot of myself in it. But when I'm writing it, it feels like I'm just following the characters around and I wonder where I placed myself before.

Gillhoughly's idea of writing short stories with each of your characters sounds like a good idea! Before I write, I'm usually running the characters through scenerios in my head, so I guess it's a similar idea.
Have you ever placed each character in front of a blender full of jello with no lid and see what happens? It's scary... especially whenever they start picking the flavors.

I have no idea how my characters take control (or attempt to). They just do. In a pinch, you could try giving one of them a blog. I did that for a character whose story was finished but whose ultimate fate was critical to the plot of the next story in the series. My character took that blog and ran with it!

I watch my characters playing out scenes in my head. Sometimes I watch people I don't even really know yet doing this, and if they're interesting enough to stick around, and to have more than one scene, they tend to become characters for some story eventually.

I never actually talk to my characters (i.e. interviewing them etc), because that would feel unnatural and artificial to me. They live in worlds that are different from this one, and they don't know me. But I watch them interact with each other.

As for the story coming from the world itself - sometimes things just follow mechanically. Design the mechanics of your world, the physics, the magic, the societal structure, and so on, in certain ways, and you get new consequences. These consequences come from you only in the sense that the component ideas come from you, and in the sense that you discover that the consequence follows.

But there are also times where I really don't know where something comes from. I'll introduce a character with one idea of their personality in my head, and by the end of their first scene, I have another idea entirely. Who did that? Technically, I suppose I must have, although how or when I did, I have no idea.

I think the real question shouldn't be who it comes from but whether it works (and btw, I was totally planning to say I drag my characters out of bed, sit them in the chair, and force them to write my daily goal, but here I am giving a serious answer instead).

Ultimately it all comes from us anyway, whether we work it out in our conscious mind or our subconscious nudges us in the direction the story should go to feel organic. If you're sweating it too much, that's probably making it harder, not easier. My advice is to let go, write what you want without worrying about where it's coming from, and fix it later. Oh, and tie the internal editor up in the closet until rewrite time.

Every writer is different. Some have characters who dictate to them, some don't.

I think up a couple of characters and start writing about them, but once the story is ongoing, the characters take over and make me write what they want me to.

I had finished my novel, or so I thought; it was 17 chapters and 96,000 words. But I kept thinking up more scenes in my head and had to get them down, I knew it wasn't finished.
My characters took me places I didn't want them to; I learned that one of them had a deep seated jealousy problem and I've had to send him for counselling. My female is so psychologically damaged, that she'll let her man walk all over her in the name of love.
So my story, that had the once perfect ending, is now a journey of problems. But my characters love one another, so they will weather the storm, eventually.

I don't know how many words there are to this now, but it is 31 chapters... so far!


Elodie

I interview my characters. I don't ask them standard interview questions, though. I ask them to tell me about how things unfolded in a specific scene, or how they felt and reacted when certain things happened.

I usually start the interview by acknowledging my own shortcomings - apologizing to them for perhaps not portraying them authentically and asking for their help. Nothing gets a character to speak up like giving him a chance to set the record straight.

Not everybody is going to be comfortable with this sort of role-playing, but it works very well for me. Some of my best scenes and plots twists arose from character interviews. I find my characters are never bossier than when they're being interviewed.

It's certainly worth trying.

I have no advice. For me, it just happens. I couldn't imagine trying to force it.

KTC said:

I have no advice. For me, it just happens. I couldn't imagine trying to force it.

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Yup. Goose, golden egg, ax, etc.

I wouldn't bother to write if I had to force it. I just get annoyed with my characters ,and have to fight for a happy medium with them, for wanting to take me to some very dark places sometimes.

KTC said:

I have no advice. For me, it just happens. I couldn't imagine trying to force it.

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Try writing faster. Accept that what you're writing is a first draft, not a finished product, and just get it down as quickly as you can. The best way to get the characters to do the work is to get out of their way.

Siddow said:

The best way to get the characters to do the work is to get out of their way.

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Ain't that the truth.


It's been a while since I felt like I needed to, but when I first started writing the series I'm working on now I wrote a few short stories where I dropped all my characters into the house I grew up in, and let them try to figure out where the hell they were and how they got there. It nailed down a lot of relationships, personality quirks, etc., and it was good fun too. Definitely unpublishable, but I still laugh when I read it.

This is a really interesting question. As others have said, I wish I could answer it for you, but it's really tough to articulate.

I do know that it's very important that the characters take over the story. In fact, it may be why some novels fail and why others succeed. I find it much easier to write when the characters are doing the heavy lifting, and nearly impossible to finish anything when I'm the one carrying the story.

I think it may have something to do with voice. If you're writing in 1st, is the voice right? Is the language right? And even if you're writing in 3rd, is your narrator talking in a way that gets the reader close to the characters he's/she's describing?

I find that if I can land the voice in the first few pages, then that makes the whole shebang a lot easier.

I'm a fan of writing very complete and detailed outlines. I know how the story should start, how to get through the dreaded middle and how it must end.

I can direct my characters to do things that follow the outline, but sometimes the dialogue takes off in directions that I did not consider at first, but seems to fit the story better. I write fast, trying to let my mind go. Sometimes the characters take my mind with them, and I let them.

Does that mean I've lost my mind?

Just write.
Allow your imagination to flow.
If you are wanting your character to go left, and something keeps tugging them right, let them lead you down that other path.
It's all about watching the movie in your head...you simply are the tool in which it all gets down on paper.
See your characters as real people in your mind's eye. What they're wearing, tone of voice, shade of skin, hair, eyes, habits..pinching the bridge of nose, to rolling of the eyes, perpetual shoulder-shrugger....seeeeeeeeee your character as if they're in a movie.
This is your cast. They're not puppets...even a movie cast standing around will be animated...so...watch 'em...begin typing what you see...what you hear, smell, the nuances of their expressions.....and as they move, or speak...you type it all down...

Like KTC, it just happens. If I had to force things, I think I'd end up with a serious form of writer's block.

Letting it stream is one way, but often the movie in the head doesn't come off in novel form. This was a key problem for me when I first started writing. I just played the head movie and lo and behold, wondrous things happened. When I edited later, it was crap.

With experience, you learn to filter the movie and use your writer's craft to mold the mind stream. Some of us are aware of doing so, others not. Some call it discipline. For others, transcribing the movie directly is the only way to get a rough draft down, and they edit from there. Whatever works best for you is the way you should go.

But it's important to discern the difference between what's in the head and what goes on paper because agents know it, editors know it, and readers sense it. When I become the reader of my own work and I sense this discrepancy, I put on my editor's hat and go to work. And sometimes I wonder where in hell I watched that movie.

a_sharp said:

Letting it stream is one way, but often the movie in the head doesn't come off in novel form. This was a key problem for me when I first started writing. I just played the head movie and lo and behold, wondrous things happened. When I edited later, it was crap.

With experience, you learn to filter the movie and use your writer's craft to mold the mind stream. Some of us are aware of doing so, others not. Some call it discipline. For others, transcribing the movie directly is the only way to get a rough draft down, and they edit from there. Whatever works best for you is the way you should go.

But it's important to discern the difference between what's in the head and what goes on paper because agents know it, editors know it, and readers sense it. When I become the reader of my own work and I sense this discrepancy, I put on my editor's hat and go to work. And sometimes I wonder where in hell I watched that movie.

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Wow. Thank you. It never occured to me to insult another writer's technique in order to stress my own way of writing.
Deeply touched.

Good question. I know this is going to sound crazy, but this is my former newspaper reporting at work. If I get stuck on a scene or concept, I sit down and "interview" the characters in my head. I write out questions and then write out how I think they would answer them.

(I don't actually hear the voices or anything.)

It really helps me with character development.

inked09012 said:

Wow. Thank you. It never occured to me to insult another writer's technique in order to stress my own way of writing.
Deeply touched.

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I guess I'm crap too becaue I see my novels in my head and often have dialogue conversations out loud as I repeat the conversation happenieng in my head. <<I do get wierd looks from my kids>>.

The best advice is to find a style you're comfortable with. Everybody has a unique way of doing things and with time and tribulation you'll find the method that suits you best. No way is better or worse, just different to suit each individual.

Personally, I don't think anything just flows constantly, all the time when something's being written. Oh how easy that would be if it were the case! While there's definately flow, and it's something you must have because it shows that you're on the right track and carrying on as you should, at the same time I think we all hit some grooved pavement along the way. Sometimes the characters just don't want to talk so they sit there with their arms crossed going 'bite me' and then you must force them to do something but it's a minor hurdle. Get over it and I'm sure you'll be back to flowing again. It's just the method of getting over it differs from person to person. Personally, I'm not at a stage where I would interview my character, mainly because the entire novel is in first person and I don't see why I should when pretty much all of the questions are going to be answered anyway.

It also helps to have an Italian woman from Brooklyn as your MC. No shortage of vocalization there. And I have to say that I see my stories, some of them, as movies in my head as well. Not the entire thing but bits and pieces I get little snippets of when I think of this chapter for writing for that section. Usually it's the catalyst for a new chapter when I get an image but as it stands, I already know exactly what my MC looks like. I actually drew her. Granted it turned out more of a caracature than a portrait because my drawing capabilities are subpar but regardless, I have a pretty firm image in my mind of what I want her to look like and then as I write the intro, which is a lead in to the rest of the story which is, kind of, autobiographical for her, I guess, her clothing may change, her mannerism, her jewelry and so on and so forth. I'm thinking of chopping her hair because I don't know if I like it as long as I have it.

Wow there is a lot of good advice in this thread.

I know for me personally I played all the scenes in my head. Then when more and more kept coming I just wrote them down. My first draft was literally a sketch of what it needed to be. It was out of my head though. About two thirds of the way through my mc took over and told me where to stick it. I did not plan for the plot to twist like it did but I think the wip was better for it.

Spend some time in your mc's head. Speak like them see the world like them. Once you have the mc down see what the other characters think about the mc. That will help you see the other characters as well. They may see the mc differently than you.