Writing Thought for the Week

[ladyseishou]

I know pretty much what my main characters are like, but beyond that I just have to wait to see what comes out of my typewriter. I make up one-third of the things people say and do in the stories I write, but I have nothing to do with the rest.

Rex Stout (author of the Nero Wolfe mystery novels)

Do your characters take over your novel, Nano Writer? Or do they follow the path you've set out in your outline?

Have you met the characters in our newest contest? Part one closes this Sunday, June 14!

Sources for the genre mini-challenge may be found here. Do you agree/disagree with the genre? Did any of the answers surprise you?

Keep writing, Nano Writer!

Comments

Ha.

[shiromirai]

They totally take over - the story, my life, my sanity....XD All together not a good sign. I tend to write out my main characters first - I've always stuck with four, I'm not sure why - and I find them a setting, occasionally exceptionally strange ones so I can crack (a feint at some kind of literary intelligence). And then, I just talk to them in which case hearing strange people's voices in your head is no longer a sign of schizophrenia and they tell me where they want to go. I can't write them when they don't talk to me, and occasionally they tell me secrets from their past that completely screws up my plot and I have to go back and edit some 50 odd pages...... And despairingly my supporting characters aren't better since I make them in relation to the main characters in that they fill up a personality/spiritual/whatever lack.

So in conclusion, I have no plot. I have a bunch of interesting people who're going through their life and forcing me to write about it. Would be great if these people weren't just fragments of my imagination, but I guess you can't have everything. :D

[facet]

I feel more like an evil god to my characters. I create them imperfectly with flaws and pitfalls. Then I give them horrible things to deal with, often from a very early age. Occasionally I'll dangle a carrot and watch them flail to reach it when there's a carrot cake right behind them.

I give them life and give them a world and they run off and muck about in my head. The minor characters are all my puppets and I use them to manipulate the main characters into doing something interesting enough to be story-worthy.