When your book has a mind of its own.

ohheyyrach77

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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.
 

tom1172821

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I can dig your high. I get the same thing with characters. I never write how relationships are going to pan out, i just invent characters and put them in room together and let them do the talking. it's invigorating sometimes.

Sometimes i'll write myself into such a corner where someone i didn't mean to kill dies, and i keep it that way, as if it had happened in real life.
 

Jamesaritchie

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I've had many writers tell me almost exactly the same thing. I have no idea what will happen next when I write, so no one is supposed to die or live, and I don't have to make anything happen, but I sure hear your story a lot.
 

chompers

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Sorry, I belong in the camp that as the writer, I'm the one in control of the storyline.

But I've heard this a lot and can kind of see how it can happen. So enjoy it while you can. :D
 

A_Read

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I definitely get that high, whenever something awesome happens in my story!

But I like killing characters...especially my favorite ones. (Geez, sounds awful when I put it that way!) Like their death sort of underscores everything their life stands for.

The hard part is then coming up with a happy-ish ending for all the characters who loved him/her.
 

Sage

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I had a character who I knew I was going to kill off early on, and then I kept adding ways to to save him...and he still died in the end.
 

jcwriter

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I wish my book did have a mind of its own; mine's not getting the job done.
 

Nichelle

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I can't relate to this at all... I plan my stories in advance, over long periods of time, and I generally know exactly what is going to happen before I start the actual "writing" phase. That said - I've had my own little "Eureka!" moments during the planning phase, where I realize that a particular action is going to be paramount to the story even though it wasn't part of my original vision.

I love how excited you are about this xD
 

Taylor Harbin

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I've had very small episodes of this, but it usually doesn't deviate far from my outline. Between points A and B there might be a A.2 that fills the gap, but I haven't seen any major changes just appear in my work like you're describing.

Maybe it's because I'm still young and learning, or maybe it only happens to certain people. Glad it works for you!
 

Sonsofthepharaohs

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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.

Yeah, this happens to me sometimes. A character that I invented for a scene, just to add some colour and balance the scene better, ended up following my MC home and totally screwing with his life. Then I realised she could be the reason my MC does something I'd been struggling to find an explanation for, and suddenly she was the key to a big subplot. She was never even supposed to exist ;)
 

StoryofWoe

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Yes, I totally get this. A couple of weeks ago, I practically tore my hair out trying to bring two characters together (I write erotica...you get the idea). They resisted. Even in their dialogue, they kept "asking" me to justify my logic and I simply couldn't. Finally, I had to rethink the whole scene and start from scratch. Thankfully, things seem to have worked out better than if I'd tried to force it.
 

Once!

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Yes, yes, yes.

I don't truly get to know my characters until I start to write them and they start interacting with each other. And that means I don't know what my characters are going to do until I get there. Sometimes I have a rough idea about how a book is going to end when I start. But this is nearly always modified as I go along.

Stephen King talks about this in On Writing. When he wrote the Stand, he raced to the middle of the book then got stuck. Plague strikes, two rival communities establish themselves in Boulder and Vegas ... then what?

It took him a while to realise that he needed to unsettle things. The direction that he had originally intended would have turned the Boulderites more and more into the Vegas community.

In a much more modest way, I'm experiencing this right now in my WIP. I have been playing with the idea of a fellowship coming together for a quest. To tweak the cliché a little, I have my group splitting apart over a disagreement. Half of them go off in a huff. The other half go off in a taxi and a huff.

But after a few chapters of this, I've decided that it really isn't working. The readers will have invested in these characters and might feel miffed that their favourites have wandered off. So I'm having to find some way to bring them back together again. The story demands it.
 

Marlys

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I did have a hard time killing a character off once, to the point where I also walked away from the story and worked on something else for months.

But you know what? I killed him as planned when I went back. Why? Because despite whatever my conscious or subconscious was throwing at me in a desperate attempt to save him, I knew it was best for the story.
 

Thewitt

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My characters change the story... alot. Now they don't take me off the outline to another world or anything, but they do change the story and as much as I sometimes don't like it, they have minds of their own.

One of my main characters died early in the book. I had already written the ending chapters.... so this was a little problematic cause he was in them. I solved the problem by keeping his son as a major character, which added even more depth to the book, however I did not expect it right up until I wrote the words...
 

graygrammar

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I've never changed a major plot point, but I do know what you mean about a character surprising you. I made up this character, this dumb throw-away character, literally the dumbest character imaginable-- I described him to my dad as a Quentin Tarantino self-insert character-- to deliver some exposition in a single scene, and he ended up being my primary antagonist. And my MC's brother. I have a handle on the plot itself, but the way I get from A to B is usually completely out of my control.
 

Twick

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Some characters have good survival instincts. That makes them interesting.

Try to see where this character is leading you. And don't feel, "Oh, I have to kill off a character I (and the readers) love, to show I'm all deep and serious." That in itself is a cliché.
 

shadowwalker

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Sometimes I think I just guide my story, rather than write it. It goes where it wants, with me occasionally pulling on the reins to keep it from wandering into the quicksand.
 

etherme

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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!
 

Jamesaritchie

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The way I write, never looking even one page ahead, is much like following the characters around, and writing down what they do, see, hear, feel, etc.

I am always in control of the story, but I like not having a clue where things are headed, or what characters will do next, or who will live or die, until it happens.
 

jaksen

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I don't plan too much, but occasionally I need to get to a certain place, and to do so, someone has to do this or that, or even die. And then there I am writing along and the darn guy lives, or the story takes an even more interesting twist and guess what - I just go with it.

And I write mysteries, so you would think I need some sort of plan, outline, or semi-plan, but I don't. Someone dies (is murdered) and I haven't a clue who did it or why they did or what the circumstances are. I just keep writing and let it work itself out.

So go with it. Trust your inner subconscious creative spirit (I just made that up) and keep writing.
 

JacobS.Tucker

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Something slightly similar happened to me. One of my characters (my main character's wife) just had to die right now. And I mean she had to, like yours did. Except, as I kept writing it, my mind constantly tried to find new ways to not have her die, to make the story line with her still in it and alive, but then I realized my plot line is actually very heavily based upon her death.

So, in the end, she died.
 

Mr Flibble

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Happens to me a lot (though I don't plan, I only have very vague ideas about what will happen, but still, the story often goes off in unexpected directions). In fact those are often the best bits! I go with them usually because I figure my subconscious is trying to tell me something.

My first romance I wrote, I killed the main love interest half way through. Oops. As soon as I'd written it I realised it was right for the story. Then I had to figure out how to make the rest work!
 

RN Hill

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Enjoy it! I LOVE it when that happens. Two quick things:

1.) I'm in almost exactly the opposite place you are. My MC was very clear, from the beginning that this is how the book ends, I die, that's it. I have spent the past year trying to figure out how to save him. He keep insisting that's cheating and I cried when the final line came to me, because I finally got to the "acceptance" part of the process.

2.) Just had the awesome experience of seeing Stephen King last night. I always knew he wrote the same way I do -- "pantsing," though I really hate that term! -- and he said a couple of things that might help. "I just assume the ending will be there." And "You don't try to steer the story. You let the story tell itself." And then he told us about Salem's Lot, where -- in his mind, originally -- the vampires were supposed to win. But his MCs were tougher than he thought they'd be, so they won instead. "And that's fine, too," he said. "I like a happy ending as much as the next person." :)

So enjoy the ride. Let your characters do what they need to do. :)
 

Peter Kenson

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Sometimes I think I just guide my story, rather than write it. It goes where it wants, with me occasionally pulling on the reins to keep it from wandering into the quicksand.
I can empathize with this. I know where I'm starting from and I always have a vague idea about where I should or want to end up. But I let the story unfold and take its own direction. Sometimes I try to "pull on the reins" to point the story towards the ending again but equally the ending might move to where the story is heading.
Does it matter? If the story is good enough, I don't think so.
THE STORY RULES!