11 May 2015

When Characters Run Amok

Most of the time (if you're like me, anyway), your characters dictate what happens in a story. You may not know what's going to happen next, but if you give your characters a bit of freedom, they may lead the way and figure it out for you. Which is usually great. You want your characters to feel like real people and to do realistic things and make choices that feel natural and not crafted by some supreme overlord...I mean, author. But is it possible to give your characters too much freedom? If you let them get too far away from you, will they do something that makes no sense? And then you're left trying to figure out where to go next or to even use this moment at all.

Think about all of the characters in your story like you're keeping them in a giant pen. You have to constantly make sure the gate is locked and no one gets out. You may let one out once in a while but never let them get too far and eventually you have to herd them back in with the others. And if one gets loose on you, all hell could break loose.

I know it sounds silly, because we created our stories and our characters, so they should be following our ideas, right? Well, not always. If you're really stuck trying to figure out what should happen next, sometimes your characters will figure it out for you. Maybe you just think of every possible scenario and whichever one feels right is the one you end up using. Or maybe an idea just randomly pops into your head and even though you never considered it, it feels perfect. So giving your characters a little freedom can be a good thing if it helps you figure something out.

But there is a very good possibility that your characters could take it too far. Maybe you're too busy paying attention to your main characters and one of the minor ones gets loose and does something silly. I'm dealing with the aftermath of this right now, actually. So I have my main WIP and I've been on the fence about writing a sequel for it for a while, but I did have a second book idea in mind. And I had a character who I imagined being basically just some cardboard cutout in the background. At some point where I wasn't paying attention, he snuck out of the pen.

Suddenly I imagined this character revealing something about himself that made zero sense. He wasn't an important character, so why would I need to know anything about him? If I included this information, the reader would probably be left scratching their head saying, "So?" But the more I thought about it, the more ideas came to me, and eventually I had a complete idea for a third book. Sounds crazy, right? It all happened so fast I didn't even know what to do about it. All because I lost control of one insignificant character. Now I'm stuck not only with another book to right, but with the task of making this character more important than I initially planned. It's not really a bad thing, in the end, but I did not see this coming at all.

So watch out for those stray characters. They may get away from you and do something you never imagined could happen.

11 comments:

  1. I always plot out my stories, but I listen to my characters if they tell me they want something else to happen. And, of course, I do what they say, because the story I'm writing is actually more theirs than mine. I've never had the problem of them straying too far though. Or if they did, I didn't notice because when they strayed, what they did was genius. :)

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  2. I've never really had my characters stray far, mostly because I don't give them perimeters! I don't write my plot beforehand, so I just let them go where they make sense.

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  3. Isn't it surprising? And where do those characters come up with that stuff, anyway?

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  4. I've had characters surprise me and I love it when that happens. It's usually how my story ideas happen. A character pops in my head and says hi, let's talk.

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  5. Stuck with another book to write - that's terrible.
    I had a side character that started with one small scene and ended up being very important in the final third of the book.

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  6. If my characters ever followed my ideas, I'd be shocked.

    I lost control of a minor character in my current WIP. He was supposed to make a brief appearance, then die in an awesome sword fight before the end of the book. Now not only does he not die, but he gets a supporting role in the next book as well as his own spin-off series. I never thought that would happen.

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  7. I really like the analogy of keeping them all in a pen. Characters are the best and the worst.

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  8. I like unpredictable characters; the fact that we can get surprised when we write is part of what makes it fun and interesting. Some of my characters get out of control too; I once created a love interest for my main character, but it soon became clear to me that she didn't really like him as much as I wanted her to. So I had to create a new one that was better for her.

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  9. One of my characters came up with a massive revelation which completely changed the way in which I need to write the second and third books in my current series...at first I was like, what is this?? It makes no sense?? But the more I thought about it, the more I saw it did make sense and it actually solved a lot more problems than it created! I'm excited to see where this character leads me next :).

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  10. That's great that your character gave you enough material for another book. Sounds like you know how to do the homework.

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  11. Ah yes, one of my characters got herself killed because of this. I felt bad. I never intended to kill her.

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