Let’s Talk Process: Characters With Minds of their Own

Two of the characters in my current project, two characters who were supposed to be using one another plain and simple, have fallen in love.

I didn’t see that coming.

No, seriously.  I didn’t.

I know.  I know what you’re thinking.  These are imaginary people who live in your head; you make them up and you make them dance.  And eat toast and get hammered.  Collect ugly shoes.

Whose novel is this anyway?

It’s mine.

Sort of.

I spend a lot of time building characters.  It’s one of my favorite things about writing.  Crafting people who, even if they live in fantastic worlds, are believable at least in their own contexts.  Deciding what they look like, what their favorite drinks are.  Coffee or tea, burger or salad, cake or pie.  Favorite flowers, vices, virtues.  Fears, nightmares.  Luddite or techie.  Earbuds or over the ear.  Non-fiction or novels.  I was a psych nurse once upon a time; people’s minds fascinate me.  And, for the sake of full disclosure, this sort of planning is also a manifestation of my own brain’s chemical imbalances; I have to know these things before I can proceed.  Part and parcel of that DSM OCD diagnosis.  In the case of character building, it works to my advantage.

Of course, then in turns around and bites me in the ass by forcing me into a crucible of aversion therapy.  But more on that in a moment.

It’s funny because it’s me.  If I can laugh at it, it’s perfectly acceptable for you to do the same.  Seriously.  Go ahead.  It’s good for me.

Does the reader need to know all of this?  Certainly not (though it’s taken me a long time to learn that).  But I need to know it.  I need to know so I can predict how a given character will react in a given situation, when they’ll snap entirely.  When they’ll haul off and punch their grandmother.  If I don’t know those things, then I end up writing flat, one dimensional representations of people.  Which is not what I’m after.

The problem, however, is that once a character has a backstory and quirks and a favorite drink and a favorite flower and a mean streak when they eat chantrelle mushrooms, they start to do things on their own.  Not in a creepy “oh my god their leaking out of my ears” way or an “oh my god my imaginary friends are coming to life sort of way.”  Yes, they are still creations of my mind but they’re also something more.  They are independent entities who sometimes make decision for themselves.

Can I force my characters into a certain act or thought?  Sure.  Of course I can.  In this tiny universe, and only in this tiny universe, I am god.  If I want to be.

BOOYAH!

Thing is, I don’t want to be.  I don’t spend hours and days and months creating them only to micromanage.  Yes, that sounds weird, but it’s one of those things you’re just going to have to trust me on.  When you try to make a character do something against what you’ve created them to be, you get stuck.  You get stuck and you stare at the screen and nothing you do seems right.  Because it isn’t.  People have a hard time acting against their natures.  If you give your characters natures, the same is going to hold true.

Why?  Shit, I don’t know.  I wish I did.  It’s just one of those things.  One of those things I wish I could put in a bottle for when I need it.  One of those things I wish I remembered first when I’m stuck and frustrated.  Which, and here comes the ass-biting bit, happens a lot because I try to hold on to the control I had in the formative creation stages rather than letting go.  I know I should trust my characters — in essence the same thing as trusting my instincts.  Which I have a very, very hard time doing in other aspects of my life.  Most aspects of my life.  *Waves*  Hi again, OCD.  It causes me huge and very real anxiety to let those instincts lead, even when writing fiction.

I’m working on it.  I’m letting these characters be in love, even though it isn’t what I had planned for them.

A step in the right direction for all of us, I think.

That’s how I do it, kids.  How about you?