Characters are interesting creatures. They have the power to make me see the world from a different perspective. They allow me to experience things I'll never do, like understanding a dog's conversation or flying a ship through a lightning storm. I can be excited about the things my characters are excited about, or don't yet know about. But it's important to remember that characters don't exist outside of my imagination.
So why do they have such control over my writing?
I know the plot. I know the structure. I know who becomes the hero or the coward, I know who dies, I know who survives and I know what they're eating for dinner later.
What I don't know is how they'll react to things. Which sounds weird, I know, but let me explain.
I was recently writing a passage of my WIP that winds down from several fights and reveals more about who the characters are. That was when I discovered a few things about my characters that even I didn't know. Like one of them has a girlfriend and they've been together for nearly two years - that came as a surprise to me. It makes sense story-wise though, since it helps explain his stony relationship with another character. But I hadn't planned for this.
I suppose I should have expected some surprises, since if I had planned the entire story right down to every tiny last insignificant detail, it would have a) taken me fifty years and b) ruined some of the fun of writing. It's more enjoyable for me to write without having to know everything about everything, that way when unexpected twists happen I can still be entertained without going completely off track. As long as I know where the story is headed, I should be allowed to watch things unfold without dictating it all.
That being said, I honestly do love to create characters. It's one of my favourite parts of writing - up there with fight scenes, parental bonding and (paradoxically) character death. Give me a topic to write about and I'll moan and grumble internally but give me some characters to imagine up and I'm as happy as a bunny in a nice warm soup. Hahahaa!
I also think I have a problem with getting too emotionally invested in my characters. When they have a crush on someone, I totally root for them whether or not I've planned for them to be successful. Also, I've started rooting for couples even when there's no indication they think of each other like that at all. And I realised I'm going to be devastated when one of my main characters (spoiler alert!) dies. This is all probably pointing towards me getting away from the laptop and getting a life, but that's not going to fix anything (or will it?).
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| Also known as 'characters'. |
Moving on from such lameness, when I was jet lagged recently I made a stream of bad decisions but the funniest had to be this note to myself:
"I decided that I'm only going to be the greatest writer who ever lived (historians among you, note the date). What is my reasoning? I have none. I need none of that. All I have is my self-belief. That's enough, right?"
This was mainly inspired by the fact that I emailed my WIP to my Kindle and read a bit of it on there. I felt like a legit writer for the first time and my enthusiasm was probably a little OTT "but so what? I've got Spiderman underpants and you don't. That's right buddy, I'm rocking. I feel straight up like a KING."
Remind me to get more than four hours sleep before I'm allowed near a keyboard.
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