Many fiction writers comment that one or more of their characters “have a mind of their own.” Some go as far as to say that they don’t know what their characters will do or how their books will end until they get there. I never truly understood this phenomenon… until it happened to me.<\/p>\n

The situation and plot of my novel came to me before the specific characters who would appear in it did. I knew the protagonist would be framed for murder and on the run, and I knew the person who tracked him down would be a private investigator posing as a reporter, but I didn’t really know who<\/i> these people were. When I first began to put the plot of my novel together, the characters were little more than placeholders — little globs of clay that I slowly molded into characters over time. Where would a depressed character hide where people would leave him alone? A hole in the wall bar, of course! Great, let’s make him an alcoholic, and his confidant, a bartender. Okay! And this reporter is going to be a real firecracker, so let’s give her red hair! And let’s give the protagonist’s late wife red hair too, and hint that the two ladies resemble one another. Awesome!<\/p>\n

In the first few chapters of my book, the dialog is weak and the character motivations are almost non-existent. They’re saying and doing what they need to do to move the story forward. As I continued to write the story, I began to learn my characters better. They developed personalities. In the first chapter I couldn’t say what Skip would or wouldn’t do, but by chapter ten I had a good idea, and by chapter twenty, he was telling me.<\/p>\n

I didn’t know my characters as well as I do now when I first sat down to plot my novel. As they’ve developed from names on a page to actual characters, I know more about them. I know their backstories. I know what motivates them. In that sense, I’m now listening to the characters they’ve developed into instead of simply moving around those undeveloped blobs of clay I began with.<\/p>\n

Because of all this, some of the things I planned to happen simply no longer make sense. In that way, I am<\/i> listening to my characters. <\/p>\n

I can’t wait to see where they finally take me! I’m getting closer to the end!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Many fiction writers comment that one or more of their characters “have a mind of their own.” Some go as far as to say that they don’t know what their characters will do or how their books will end until they get there. I never truly understood this phenomenon… until it happened to me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-122","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=122"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9246,"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122\/revisions\/9246"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}