Can characters 'write themselves'?

anguswalker · Mar 19, 2012

I have come across this notion a number of times in these forums. Now maybe it's just me being a cynical Brit but my first reaction was to dismiss the idea as New Age twaddle. How could characters that had no existence outside the writer's mind (until the novel is read when they exist in the readers' minds too) possibly 'tell me that the scene wasn't working' to quote one post?

Of course the idea isn't new to this forum. Stephen King has described the process of constructing a novel as creating characters and them 'letting them loose' and Ray Bradbury said 'First, find out what your hero wants, then just follow him!'

This doesn't mean per se of course that the idea has any merit, but it is obviously worthy of serious consideration. I have never had the feeling myself that my characters are telling me what to write, but the notion isn't entirely fanciful to me. So what is going on if and when it does happen?
The answer I believe is down to the incredible power of the unconscious parts of the brain to process complex ideas and come up with creative and often brilliant solutions, which the conscious mind then takes credit for as if the idea was its own. This notion is explored in the book Incognito, The Secret Life of the Brain and elsewhere.

Now to me a lot of what that book says makes sense. Perhaps more than we care to think of our ability as writers (if we have any!) comes from our unconscious rather than our conscious minds. The issue then for the unconscious mind would be how to communicate its ideas and solutions to our conscious mind and this I think is where the idea of characters talking to their writer comes from. I believe that we are strongly predisposed as a species to think in symbols and what better symbol could there be for our own creative unconscious than the characters we have ourselves created?

So perhaps this idea of characters who 'tell the author what to write' is simply another way of describing the functioning of the unconscious mind. When an author's characters 'speak to them' perhaps it is simply their own unconscious mind they are listening to. So I for one will be listening out to see if my characters will talk to me after all. I just won't be telling anyone else I'm doing it.

Well I am British, God damn it.

Devil Ledbetter · Mar 19, 2012

Hi Angus, and welcome to AW.

I am one of those writers whose characters talk and decide for themselves how they're going to behave. I absolutely attribute this to the subconscious. I don't have any new-agey beliefs that they "really exist" on some other plane ... I just trust that they're in my subconscious and if I listen to them their stories will come out. My role is simply to report them faithfully, and readably.

I resist the whole "writer as special snowflake" angle where people basically brag about how emotionally overwrought they get over their characters, or how they put on special clothes to write, or how they must have everything "just so" to write, or whatever. It's just too "look at me, I'm a special writer" for my tastes. To each his own, I guess.

I do get emotionally invested in my characters but I don't like to talk about it -- it's really not about me, it's about them.

There are writers who never see their characters as "real" and manage to move them around the plot like marionettes. If one can do this and make those characters feel real, more power to them. After all, there are some puppeteers who are very good at their craft.

robjvargas · Mar 19, 2012

I'm with the Devil.

I spend time and effort creating the personality behind the character that the personality *becomes* a personality. And, sometimes, that creation goes other than to the story. I had a starship captain all worked up, and he was a captain alright... who could only talk about his sailboat back home.

They become self-determining to a possibly troubling degree. I *have* had arguments with the characters.

Maybe that's TMI...

epublishabook · Mar 19, 2012

My characters have the knack of destroying my best laid plans. Whenever I have a wonderful scene all ready in my head and start writing it down, my characters refuse to follow the script and take me to different places alltogether.
Good thing my children are more obedient, otherwise life would be hell

lolchemist · Mar 19, 2012

I think when authors say that their characters speak to them, they're not describing something like a schizophrenic episode where they're literally hearing voices in their heads, I think they're just being hyperbolic. They just mean that they know their characters so well that the story practically writes itself.

And then there are these people. Thank goodness this trend died down, to be honest!

randi.lee · Mar 19, 2012

I'm with devil, too. One of my characters was supposed to have three lines in the entire WIP... now he's a main character!

Buffysquirrel · Mar 19, 2012

It's a metaphor, stupid.

(all references to stupid should not be taken personally)

ETA: I'm having a very bad writing day. I must be the stupid one. Sorry!

RichardGarfinkle · Mar 19, 2012

The short answer is yes. At some point if I'm doing it right, a character comes alive in my mind and I can hear what they'd say and what they'd think in a situation. Once that happens the character becomes much easier to write.

Also, I'm afraid that psychology has put a fear of the idea of hearing voices in our heads. But everyone hears voices all the time. When we remember people talking we hear voices. When we imagine what someone would say, we hear voices and so on.

We also see visions in our heads a lot of the time (some of us more than others). Our imaginations and our memories draw on our sensory impressions, so what's weird about imagining something that can be seen and which speaks?

jeffo20 · Mar 19, 2012

Here's the thing.

My characters surprise me. I will describe it as them doing their own thing, going in the direction they need to go, and all that, and it will probably sound new-agey, or spacey, or like I'm some sort of nut. But it's really the easiest way (for me, anyway) to describe the feeling of having the subconscious take over. That's really what it is, it's tapping into a different level of your brain.

I do a lot of thinking about my writing. Thinking while I'm sitting at the keyboard looking over the last paragraph. Thinking while I'm in the shower, driving the car, doing the dishes. I play out scenes, hear conversations in my head between my characters. I do a lot of *conscious* thinking, pushing and pulling these scenes and conversations, asking questions - What if he did this? What if she said that? - and playing around with the results. But there are times when what comes out of the fingertips happens seemingly on its own. The scene that I worked out in my head on the drive to the supermarket goes in a completely different direction than what I planned. Where does it come from? I know it comes from the subconscious, I know it comes from me, but it's not always planned out. It just happens.

Torgo · Mar 19, 2012

I've written scenes in which characters start to question plot points. "Hey, why don't we just ride one of them giant eagles into Mordor, Gandalf?" It's because I've got into a scene without actually working through those questions in my head first. Because you're more immersed in the fiction when you're actually writing it, rather than planning it, sometimes your plans don't accord with what the reality 'on the ground', as it were.

Orchestra · Mar 19, 2012

If you believe your characters are real in the sense that they exist independent of your thoughts, you are in urgent need of psychiatric help. If you can't write your piece a certain way because your characters won't let you, you are simply being affectatious.

Buffysquirrel · Mar 19, 2012

Orchestra said:
If you believe your characters are real in the sense that they exist independent of your thoughts, you are in urgent need of psychiatric help. If you can't write your piece a certain way because your characters won't let you, you are simply being affectatious.

Absolutely. Because if you have never experienced something, nobody else can have, either. Solipsism FTW.

Gilead · Mar 19, 2012

For me it's more that after enough writing gets done, my characters have been in enough situations that I've established a baseline of behaviour for each of them. Which means that if I want one of them to act in a certain way, the critical part of my mind might cut in and say 'That isn't in line with what they've done before, think of something else'.

Torgo said:
"Hey, why don't we just ride one of them giant eagles into Mordor, Gandalf?"

"Because giant eagles are both intelligent and selfish. But I won't stop you, so if you want to be flown to dangerous altitudes while holding a ring that makes intelligent creatures want to kill the bearer and take the ring for themselves, go ahead."

goldhorse · Mar 19, 2012

I do what the voices in my head tell me.

I know it's my subconcious but it's so much easier to blame it on the character! What's so wrong with creating a character with such a strong personality that it takes life in your head? Isn't that what writing is about?

Buffysquirrel · Mar 19, 2012

Gilead said:
For me it's more that after enough writing gets done, my characters have been in enough situations that I've established a baseline of behaviour for each of them. Which means that if I want one of them to act in a certain way, the critical part of my mind might cut in and say 'That isn't in line with what they've done before, think of something else'.

QFT

willietheshakes · Mar 19, 2012

You know the story about the goose that laid the golden eggs?

That.

robjvargas · Mar 19, 2012

Orchestra said:
If you believe your characters are real in the sense that they exist independent of your thoughts, you are in urgent need of psychiatric help. If you can't write your piece a certain way because your characters won't let you, you are simply being affectatious.

I guess I can delete Woodrow Wilson from the real list...

Don't forget that, sometimes, the characters might be dramatized, but they *can* be real.

Then again, no one here has actually said that they characters are real.

What an interesting post to use to become concerned about affectations.

Ari Meermans · Mar 19, 2012

RichardGarfinkle said:
The short answer is yes. At some point if I'm doing it right, a character comes alive in my mind and I can hear what they'd say and what they'd think in a situation. Once that happens the character becomes much easier to write.

Also, I'm afraid that psychology has put a fear of the idea of hearing voices in our heads. But everyone hears voices all the time. When we remember people talking we hear voices. When we imagine what someone would say, we hear voices and so on.

We also see visions in our heads a lot of the time (some of us more than others). Our imaginations and our memories draw on our sensory impressions, so what's weird about imagining something that can be seen and which speaks?

This exactly how it works for me.

Orchestra said:
If you believe your characters are real in the sense that they exist independent of your thoughts, you are in urgent need of psychiatric help. If you can't write your piece a certain way because your characters won't let you, you are simply being affectatious.

(bolding mine)

I would disagree with this. My characters are not me and not based on me; and they often behave in ways that I wouldn't/haven't under the same circumstances.

When your characters are realized (three dimensional), and when the events surrounding the characters are fully limned, there can be the realization that certain actions and certain lines of dialogue as written will not work for that character within the construct of the story. So, yes, I would say characters "tell" me they wouldn't speak a line of dialogue in just that way or wouldn't perform a certain action without a more compelling reason to do so. And, that will make me stop and reevaluate where the story is going.

Niiicola · Mar 19, 2012

Orchestra said:
If you believe your characters are real in the sense that they exist independent of your thoughts, you are in urgent need of psychiatric help. If you can't write your piece a certain way because your characters won't let you, you are simply being affectatious.

I agree with this to a point. But saying that your characters are refusing to do something is basically just another way to say that your subconscious is telling you the scene isn't right. So yeah, you can plow through and make the characters do what you had planned, but in my experience, that usually ends up not being the best option for that scene. And most of the time, it ends up getting changed later.

Having said that, there was a thread a while back where somebody was saying their character was balking at something they needed to do. Somebody else pointed out that it just might be that character's natural inclination to avoid the upcoming confrontation. To me, that's a sign of a very well written character, and it means that a bit of mental coaxing is in order to get the scene going.

So yeah, I do believe in listening to your characters, but to a point. Probably not a great idea to let them totally run the show. Kind of like kids

Bufty · Mar 19, 2012

Angus, I know you've proofread and double-checked formatting and everything but I think you mean subconscious - not unconscious.

If you write while unconscious that's a pretty neat trick.

Devil Ledbetter · Mar 19, 2012

Orchestra said:
If you can't write your piece a certain way because your characters won't let you, you are simply being affectatious.

Or maybe you are letting your characters become more than paperdolls you shove around your plot.

Dreity · Mar 19, 2012

Yeah, it's basically just being familiar with the personality you've established to the point that you don't often have to think very long about what they would do in any given situation. Once you know you've got an overly talkative perverted smart-ass on your hands it's fairly easy to imagine what would happen if they suddenly had to share a prison cell with a pretty elf lady and her Knight Templar older brother.

lbender · Mar 19, 2012

Gilead said:
For me it's more that after enough writing gets done, my characters have been in enough situations that I've established a baseline of behaviour for each of them. Which means that if I want one of them to act in a certain way, the critical part of my mind might cut in and say 'That isn't in line with what they've done before, think of something else'.

This.

My characters are written with a personality all their own. If I feel I want them to do one thing, but their personality balks at doing that, I listen to the character. Consistency is critical.

I've read pieces where a character behaves in one way throughout the entire piece until the climax. Then, to resolve the problem, they act entirely 'out of character', so to speak. It's lazy and it drives me nuts, and I'm unlikely to pick up something by that author ever again.

RichardGarfinkle · Mar 19, 2012

Devil Ledbetter said:
Or maybe you are letting your characters become more than paperdolls you shove around your plot.

Let's be a little careful.

People have different underlying methods of writing. Some people have the characters move the plot, others have the plot reveal the characters.

One of the things that most convinces people they can't do something is to have the methods favored by one group of people doing that thing treated as the only way to do it.

LillyPu · Mar 19, 2012

Sure. And after my characters finished writing themselves, they queried an agent and got published.

I have them washing my car right now... Writing is SO easy!

Can characters 'write themselves'?

anguswalker

Devil Ledbetter

Come on you stranger, you legend,

robjvargas

epublishabook

lolchemist

Shooting stars.

randi.lee

Certified Non-Genius

Buffysquirrel

RichardGarfinkle

Second Edition and Second Laughter

jeffo20

Tyrant King

Torgo

Formerly Phantom of Krankor.

Orchestra

practical experience, GTFO

Buffysquirrel

Gilead

goldhorse

Oooh look at the pretty pony!

Buffysquirrel

willietheshakes

Gentleman. Scholar. Bastard.

robjvargas

Ari Meermans

MacAllister's Official Minion & Greeter

Niiicola

Twitchy

Bufty

Where have the last ten years gone?

Devil Ledbetter

Come on you stranger, you legend,

Dreity

lbender

RichardGarfinkle

Second Edition and Second Laughter

LillyPu