When your book has a mind of its own.

Paramite Pie

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My characters are exposition experts that throw out complex backstories, strategies and solutions to all kinds of problems.

It's like I hear their voice and I write it -- and before I know it there's a historical battle or legal precedent or tidbit of info that plugs my potential plotholes. Now if only I could keep up and write down everything they say (they tend to talk over each other... hard to type it all!). To keep up I just write the dialogue and add the descriptive prose later, deleting unnecessary or off-topic chats. :D
 

Kashmirgirl1976

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I enjoy the ride. While I'm a pantser, I have some set idea on how things would progress. However, sometimes, the story changes a bit and I have to let it flow. I have no shame.
 

ewong

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Seriously it bites when that happens. It's happening to me as well,
but like any writing, it's in a state of flux and things happen.
(Butterfly effect?)

So I try to figure out what happens and see how things go. I
just hope the story doesn't go all screwed up thanks to the
characters.
 

Joanette

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I feel where you're coming from on this, and it is one of the parts I love the most about being a writer. Stories for me are a living thing, always growing and changing. It's part of the fun of writing. And if you keep keeping your character alive, maybe he is supposed to live after all?
 

jjdebenedictis

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I love trotting out this anecdote: You know Aragorn, heir of Isildur, from Lord of the Rings? When he originally shows up in the story, he is calling himself Strider.

When Strider showed up in Bree and latched onto the Hobbits, it came as a complete surprise to Tolkien and not a welcome one. He had no idea who this guy was.

So Tolkien had to keep writing to find out, and as a result, a whole other layer of epic richness was added to the story.

What's going on is that we humans have two modes of problem-solving, logical and associative.

Associative problem-solving is a subconscious process where your brain jig-saws ideas together, trying to find a good fit and a "big picture" that makes sense. If it finds one, then it guides you via gut instincts and hunches toward that understanding, because the subconscious is non-verbal.

So when your story takes off in a direction you didn't intend, that's your subconscious saying, "Hey, I've come up with something that is going to work out great -- but you've got to let me take the reins, because I can't tell you in words how to do it."
 
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sayamini

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Yes! Going into my MS, I had no idea how it was supposed to end, but there was this plot forming before my eyes and it just ended up working out. I rewrote a lot, but the plot seemed to take on a life of its own.
 

AFLOWRITER

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The in the OP is exactly what I am going through with a male character. The story is supposed to be about a female, but I somehow wroe the male character out to be exactly what the female MC wants; which throws her as well as myself into another scene, chapter or novel altogether.

But this....

I often have a rough outline when I'm writing, but the darn characters rarely do what they're supposed to (to get to the next point) so I usually just end up 'following them around' and documenting what they do. In the end it usually seems to work out!

seems to be what happens when you stay the course and don't force things (this includes forcing actions of any kind).
 

cerissa

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I have this happen to me, espically with this short story, I plan ahead of time, I write a summery then I do kinda like a mind mapping of what is going to happen and when, then I try and stick to it, but when im writing, my story just kind of goes where it wants,
 

jaksen

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How about this - you write something that you're not fully aware of at the time. (Okay, if you are aware, it's on a whole diff. level than being FULLY aware.)

Then you sit down a few hours later to re-read, revise, check over, call it whatever and you say to yourself wth! Did I write that? Nah.

Has happened to me a few times. Once in particular when my teenage MC gives a guy who's dating his mother a shove as he walks past him. I am like no, no way, this kid is 14, would never shove a guy twice his size and a firefighter, to boot.

But he did and the firefighter doesn't even flinch. Maybe he was as shocked as me.

I kept it in. Sold the story. Paid the taxes on my second house with that check. :D
 

rwm4768

practical experience, FTW
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I had something new show up today as I was writing my epic fantasy. Somewhere in my world, there's a female Christ-like figure. I'm not exactly sure how she'll play into the plot (she probably won't factor much in the first book), but it was an interesting twist that just happened as I was writing.
 

RikWriter

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I try for this when I write. I create the background, the scenario and the characters and then I let the book write itself. When it doesn't, that's the hard part, the part where I don't feel like writing. When it does, the words fly off the page and the characters control their actions as if they were real people. That's when I know the book works.
 

Lhowling

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I outline my novels and guide the story where I need it to go. If I consider my characters as living, breathing humans then they will all die eventually. But, which deaths are important for the story to be told and for the remaining characters to grow? Sure, my characters make different decisions than those I thought they'd make. That said, if my protagonist is scheduled to die, then they are going to die.
 

Augustine Raine

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No, you're not alone, and I have had an unanswerable question/unavoidable moment, and it's difficult to write through that, so I'm going to point out three things to help you out here: 1984, The Hunchback of Notre Dame (the actual book, not the movie(s)), and Jane Eyre.

In the Hunchback, everybody dies. Literally everyone. And as I was reading it, I spent the entire novel thinking "maybe this will happen. Maybe that will happen. Maybe they will get out of it. maybe, maybe, maybe, please let it be so. And it was great. Did everyone die? Yes. Does everyone end up unhappy and unfulfilled with the exception of the most cowardly of the named characters? Yes. And was it amazing? Yes. It wasn't amazing because the author killed his darlings, it was amazing because he created so many opportunities for it not to happen and then had each character act in the way that they bad been the entire time.

In the Jane Eyre, the same thing happens, only the ending is the opposite: everyone but the most troublesome of characters lives. There were a lot of ways for things to go wrong, and for either the characters I was cheering for to die (Jane, when scarlet fever came to Lowell school, and when Rochester's wife rips up her veil, and Rochester, during his many trips abroad, during the times when he had to subdue his wife, during either of the fires), or their love to do so (when everyone comes to the manor for that month long house party thing, when Jane is proposed to, when she finds out about Rochester's wife), but it doesn't happen. By each and every character acting in the way they were set up to act (and no small amount of luck, what with the fires and what not) they wind up where they need to be. The whole time this is all happening, I'm just, like: please don't die please don't die please don't die.

And, finally, 1984.
The ending was obvious from the start; Winston spends the entire book reflecting on the nature of society, acknowledging that it would crush him sooner rather than later, and doing what he wants anyways. So even though I knew how it was going to end from the beginning, I still read on. No, Winston and Julie don't die, but their society kills their minds, and that's death enough.

I say all this to say that to have them live or die is not important; it's what simultaneously makes both the most sense and the best story. Good luck.
 

Outertrial

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I'm literally so excited right now, and I'm also fairly sure I'm absolutely crazy. Explaining this to other people, they will definitely think I'm nuts. So maybe someone else has had a similar experience.

About a year ago I started writing a story, from the very moment I started writing it, I knew the male MC was going to die. (Two MC's) the more I started writing the story though, the worse I started feeling. I love this character and I so didn't want to kill him. Explaining that to a non-writer friend, they'd always tell me "So don't kill him?" like it was so easy. He had to die. It was just the point of the whole thing!

So when I got to the part of the story where his death came. I stopped. Literally. Put the novel down, and left it. Started revising a different one again. I just didn't want to have to kill him. So I didn't.

I recently just picked it back up, like seven months later and continued writing it, and at the point where he was supposed to die (a surgery) he survived it! I thought, oh, I'm going to keep him around for a bit, turn him into a really bitter person, that right whenever he comes back around to his former glory BAM, complications and he's dead. I'm thinking it'll be completely unexpected, can add even more depth to the story, more relationship building for my two MC's, and I can keep him around for a bit longer which of course made me happy.

Only I wrote his surgical complication, and suddenly am writing his recovery. Another, slightly bigger complication, and he's still kicking. I think I suddenly just realized maybe I don't have to kill him. I don't know how it happened, and now I don't have an ending for my story, but I'm soooo excited. I just had to do a little happy dance.


Now, question is, have any of you guys had anything like this before?
Where you know you have to do something in your story. Like kill a character, and there's no way around it? And non-writer friends don't understand because I mean, you're the author you can just write it another way, right? WRONG!

Or how about your story taking on a life of it's own. I mean literally. This isn't the first time it's happened in a novel of mine. I'm going about my merry way, writing my merry novel, and all of the sudden a character I've never thought of comes out of no where and just ends up to be like a really important person to the story. Or I keep trying to kill someone and they won't die.

It makes literally no sense. And I absolutely love it. Please tell me I'm not the only one who has less of a say in my book than my book has...if that makes any sense.

Interesting. The opposite happened to me in that I was writing a scene and for some reason none of the bits with one of my key characters was working, 85% of the way into the book. Then it suddenly occurred to me that the reason it wasn't working was that they had died in the previous chapter, so shouldn't actually have been there.

I really didn't want them to die, didn't need them to die to finish the story, but I went back and killed them, then the next chapter started flowing again without them.
 

Sage

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Cheering you all on!
Just a note that this thread is 2 years old.
 

KTC

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I write by the seat of my pants without a clue as to what is happening in the next scene even. I usually write my first draft in the course of a 72-hr weekend, so I race against time to find out what happens. I unearth the story as I write it. I tried outlines, but they don't work for me. Outlines don't work for me in life either. I don't even plan an hour ahead, outside the rigidity of my work schedule. I like being surprised by my story...it keeps me motivated.

- - - Updated - - -

Just a note that this thread is 2 years old.
oops
 

Joseph Schmol

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I write by the seat of my pants without a clue as to what is happening in the next scene even. I usually write my first draft in the course of a 72-hr weekend, so I race against time to find out what happens. I unearth the story as I write it. I tried outlines, but they don't work for me. Outlines don't work for me in life either. I don't even plan an hour ahead, outside the rigidity of my work schedule. I like being surprised by my story...it keeps me motivated.

- - - Updated - - -


oops

Wow. That is an incredible thing to see on the page. Would you mind speaking some on the mechanics of how you make it happen?
 

KTC

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Wow. That is an incredible thing to see on the page. Would you mind speaking some on the mechanics of how you make it happen?

I participate in the Muskoka Novel Marathon in Huntsville Ontario every July. With 40 other writers. We collect donations for literacy programs in the area (this year we raised well over $30,000.00) and we all sit in the same large room for 72hrs and we each attempt to write a novel. There is a kitchen staff that keeps us fed... we don't have to lift a finger. We break bread together, laugh, shout, cry, and write, write, write. Bum in chair... That's all there is to it. (-:
 

R.T James

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All my stories do this. However, I am not a benign deity. If a character was declared to the gods that their blood must be spilt, then by the gods it shall be spilt. Even if I have to pull the damn trigger myself.

The only time I had a few times I have spared a character, but that was from a fate that didn't make sense. So as they're running off I'm sitting there tapping my chin trying to figure out what is the next course of action. Thankfully I have a few loose cannons in my stories who are more then happy enough to cause chaos, and drag a kicking character back to the stage. This is my play damnit! Go back into make up you fiend!

I simply place the characters down and let them run through the pages. I'll occasionally throw a brick or take pot shots at them, but point A is where they start, and point B is where they end. I do not outline, I only establish loose guidelines, a shopping list. If the ice-cream turns out to be cheery chocolate truffle instead of sherbet I shall not complain, at least it is ice-cream.

I go with the flow, and often times this leads to wonderful escalation that I wish I had the mind to say. "Oh yeah I planned that. Yup 100% per cent me from the start! Pshaw! I knew everything before hand."

If I said that I would be on the floor and have people stepping me.

Signed,

Mr. James