I whole heartedly agree. I think doing what's best & most logical for the story is the upmost importance I had only meant to say that I don't personally change or alter characters, but I believe that's because characters are in fact the driving force of my story: I suppose I write novels of character rather than novels of incident. My story adjusts to fit the characters, rather than my characters to fit the story (as the story more or less is simply them). I think I was unclear that my way of writing & my experiences are no way reflective of how I believe all should write (as though I am somehow to be emulated and the final word on correct procedure) and that my mentioning of my particular petpeeve had no correlation to other's here describing their process of writing or character development. That was just sloppy on my part, and I am sorry if I made it seem I was judging or berating others experiences or methods
What if you're not "adjusting the characters to fit the story," but instead got a random idea one day that made both so much better than your original idea had been?
I would support following up on that whole-heartedly. I've never had it happen to me before, but if it ever did of course the the logical course is to follow the best fitting writing, of character or story or both simultaneously.
No offense at all taken! I think you may be more of a planner, I am more of pantser. Professionally I am an engineer who does extensive technical writing, and that is highly disciplined, outline oriented. I know what I am going to write before I write it. My approach to fiction is in rebellion against that straight jacket, although the now almost subconscious attention to SPaG and the details is still there. I have a friend who has published over 40 books, and sits on the literature department at my Alma Mater. He writes mostly modern navy action/adventure fiction. But his approach to planning is in the extreme. He develops detailed character sketches. Since the same characters appear in most of his books that is OK, good for consistency and long term growth. And then there are the new ones. Then there is a matrix of character motivation, flaws, strengths, goals, aspirations, how they are going to succeed or fail. Then there is the story outline, and finally a flow chart that locates each character in time and space, what they are doing before they interact with each other, how they get there and what happens. All before he writes the first word of the story. At that point, I guess all he has to do is fill in the blanks! I think my fiction would turn out looking like the acceptance and development test procedures currently on my screen, if I used that approach. Mine was written over 20 years and is 17,000 mile trip by land and sea through first century Europe, Africa and Asia. I don't think it would be amenable to his approach. This has actually been a good thread discussion @NoGoodNobu ! Enjoyed it!
There is a character in my story that is a complete bitch. I needed her to be a menace so my main MC could develop to where I needed her to go. I had no idea why this person was such a bitch, but come the end of a 5000 word spewage, I knew. I loved every second of that process. Where it came from, I don't know. There are times, I write and write and then the next day I read it back and think to myself, that's not bad at all. The funny thing is, I don't remember writing it. Dose anyone else go through this or am i a weirdo?
Well...I have yet to actually write anything. But I've created and discovered new things about my characters I didn't intend at first as I'm doing research or drafting a scene. I love it when that happens.
I had a character that was based off a color. I wanted to take said character one direction, but the character pulled me another, suffice to say that with some guidance, i.e. breaks in the "Too much!" department, and "If you don't stop it I will kill you off!!!!" or the "You want [whatever]? Ok, ok!" the character and I have made a truce.
I believe all characters should grow during a novel. And that you never know where they are really going to go. Honestly, that to me is the beauty of writing.
I think the true question of this should be translated to: "Does your character have any real depth or development?" Almost any character--well main character atleast, would have 'changes'. Atleast in any long running story. Now I can get where some people may find a fault in that. "Well what if it is unintentional? Of course some people may want their character to grow." Well my opinion stays the same. I think all characters with great, riveting and roles of remembrance developed various inclinations--due to characteristics forced or willingly changed. Especially in long stories. Because the more they go through, or any emotional or mental strength fortified in the long run; would usually be in result of trials and tribulations or a turn of events in even just a light hearted situation that requires adaptation. I think unintentional growth is what makes a character unique, because if it is unintentional to the writer, than that means usually many things happened in the story of the character--so many, that new growths and factors about the character blossomed. And any dynamic character I can remember had changes in personality and viewpoint shifts throughout the story, whether it was an adventure(in any fashion of the word) or an enigma. TLDR: Basically, I think it would come naturally, if there is true depth.
This sounds unique; I've always felt that character development is important when designing characters so the idea of it occurring unintentionally is interesting...
If it is unintentional to you the writer, that means it is unexpected, and therefore generally intriguing, to the reader. If the writer knows in advance the trajectory of a character, so does the reader, and there is no sense of discovery, no "Wow, I never expected that!" moment. In other words, it's boring! My pirate initially appeared as a ruthless villain. I did not expect him to evolve into the honorable thief, urbane and self-educated, that he became in the first few chapters. I expected him to develop some kind of accommodations with his Roman victims... otherwise how were they going to get to China after he hijacked their ship? - but I didn't expect them to become friends, and I never expected him to be the one that would effect their rescue from a death sentence in China, and use his skills as a consummate lawbreaker to get them back on the road home. He was full of surprises for me, and my readers found him so, also.
Not necessarily, it is possible for the writer not to be surprised by an arc that would surprise the reader, But yeah, "both" is almost always better than one or the other
Yep. I mean... not trying to be pedantic, but isn't that the point of writing a story? I mean this from both parts of what @Tenderiser has said. The character needs to grow (or change). There's little to be found in a story that has no change for the people therein. Everything changes us. Everything. A story should be about that. The change needs to be intentional at the hands of the author. I echo @NoGoodNobu in her perplexity at writers who claim their characters surprise them. What does that even mean? It kinda' means to me that you're not in control of your story, and worse, you're not in control (or unaware) of what your story is supposed to mean, to you, your reason for writing it. And before people jump on me and point out that people most certainly do stupid and out of character things in real life (of course), my point to this is that your story is not real life. It's a vehicle for you to say something. If your characters "surprise you" and end up not saying what you intended the story to say, then that's little different to running your car off the road.
That is a very interesting thing you bring up, @Wreybies . The surprised by characters thing you mention about @NoGoodNobu . I find that I surprise myself about what comes out of me through my characters. Almost like tapping into an unknown part of ones self, and then letting it spill out on the page through a fictional being. How can the creation surprise the creator? I think that this would only be possible if one were to literally create life, not unlike a deity. But for fiction I think it is the other way around.
@Wreybies You know how the second draft of the text is always better than the first draft? Ideas often work the same way When you come up with a new idea half-way through writing, and when you are surprised by how much better the story becomes with that idea compared to the original version, then you're still choosing that second idea over the first one, but it doesn't feel like a choice When I started my Doctor Who fanfic, I imagined that Captain June Harper, Damien Mitchell, Nathan Durst, and Arachne would be the lead heroes. When I came up with a vigilante serial killer angle for Harper, I was surprised by how much more real the story felt to me when I had 3 hero protagonists led by a villain protagonist. I originally imagined that Damien was a slightly better fighter than Harper. When I came up with the idea that Harper had superpowers, I was surprised by how hard it became to imagine her not being ridiculously overpowered compared to Damien and Nathan. I originally imagined that Damien was asexual/aromantic like me, and I hadn't decided whether one of my other male characters would be ace or straight. When I started toying around with the idea of making them a couple, I was surprised by how much better both of their existing arcs became when combined with each others' in that way. I also had a bunch of other new ideas over the course of the 2 1/2 years I spent writing this (such as my psychic character Kyra striking off on her own at the end), and I chose to reject them because they didn't surprise me with how much more real they felt compared to what I already had.
Absolutely. In one short story, two of my central characters (one of them being the protagonist) started off as just partners. They evolved into lovers, and I think that ended up giving some events later in the story a bigger payoff.
I don't think any of my above repondents are using the word "surprised" in the way that I or @NoGoodNobu are referring to. You hear writers say things all the time that make it sound as if the characters literally have a life of their own and words fly off the ends of the writer's fingers as though under the throws of automatic writing. Perhaps this is just reading too much into an affected manner of expressing oneself. Could be. What you describe, @Simpson17866, doesn't sound like it's not under your control. (sorry for the double negative) It sounds very much under your control. It may not have been the choices you originally thought you would make, but you still describe choices that sound like you've thought about them well as regards the impact they will have on your story.
My own example: And I've used this one a ton of times to talk about many things, so please forgive.... I wrote a character named Amila for one my WIP's. She originally came to me as a country lass, as innocent as a leaf and just about as bright as one. She fills the roll of house keeper (sort of) or lady's maid (maybe). A few dives into period drama (both TV and books) told me that the Amila I wrote could never be a house keeper or a lady's maid. Both positions are quite high up in the order of things in that kind of world and would require someone who was very bright, self possessed, knowledgable about people and their vagaries. She would need to be the kind of person who could "read the room" in an instant and know what was needed, wanted, and how to behave without anyone telling her. I had to completely rewrite her. Now, the "surprising" bit for me was that in rewriting her she went from being an ancillary character to a central one. But she (Amila) didn't surprise me in her actions. I had simply planned poorly, and had I planned better, done better research, I would have known that the character had much more potential in the story, more interest, more to say. I guess it's semantic, really.
@Wreybies Technically, yes, but the moment that I go from "Not having the idea" to "Having the idea" still feels like a surprise in the moment, and it doesn't feel like I'm deciding which idea feels better so much as I'm recognizing which idea is better. Not technically what's happening, but that's still what it feels like is happening.
This is the kind of thing I file in my "Shit Pretentious Writers Say" notebook. It's bollocks, but I think they think it makes them sound like creative geniuses??
Are you saying @Wreybies & I are pretentious writers, or the type of authors we are referring to are pretentious?
I happen to be one of those writers who "takes dictation" from his characters. I think a lot of this is the planner vs. pantser debate, which is not ever going to get resolved. If you are a planner, such one very well-publisher author I know (40 books by major publishers) if your character surprises you, then you have in fact driven the car off the road. He not only uses a character biography for each character, but also a matrix by character of major personality traits, and a flow chart of how and when these characters will interact ... BEFORE he puts words on paper. It seems to be that would be just filling in the blanks. I can't argue with his approach - 40 books published to my zero (as yet) kind of settles that argument. I also know I can't write that way. If I did, my fiction would sound very much like the voluminous technical writing I do in my day job, where I follow that approach assiduously. Those I begin with an outline, and I know what each chapter is going to cover. Not my fiction. BTW my author friend and I are both engineers, and contemporaries of the same school. I think we also need to differentiate the meanings of "surprise". For a character to do something totally irrational, totally not in character, you had best have a good reason for that. For those of us who are pantsers, whose characters' personalities emerge as we write about them, we are always discovering something new and interesting about them, something we didn't know before., which is not the same as them doing something totally off the wall. My pirate, shortly after he hijacks the Roman ship, encounters a vicious Indian Ocean cyclone. Before the storm cranks up to full fury, he releases the two Romans chained in the hold, and engages them to help fight the ship through the storm, saying not even Romans deserve to drown chained in a hold. In the course of the storm one of the Romans in turn saves his life. So both did something seemingly out of character: both should have been happy to see the other drown. Afterwards, we learn that 1. The pirate as a young deckhand 40 years earlier, had faced that same end, chained in the hold of a foundering ship with the water rising. He broke out, killed the captain, saved the ship, and thereby became a pirate. We learn that, although he is ruthless, and has killed, or had others kill, many people, he is reluctant to kill unless necessary. 2. The Romans saved his life, because at the height of the storm's fury, the pirate seemed to be the only man likely to see the ship through safely. So I learned something about my characters, and as he talks with the Romans over dinner after the storm, we find him urbane, witty, and well-educated, though mostly by his own effort. A charismatic leader and a meticulous planner who in another life might have been a highly successful businessman or military leader, but as it is, a highly successful pirate using those same skills. Not "running off into the ditch", just an unexpected side of his character, and he winds up being not only likeable, but loved.
Not necessarily. If a character surprises you, then something has struck you about your story that you weren't aware of when you started. That's not necessarily a bad thing at all. The bad thing is trying to stuff the toothpaste back into the tube and make your character 'stick' to the original story, when the new story actually has more depth. You still have control of your story. It won't write itself. But be open to new ideas which develop as you write, and don't be afraid to expand your original ideas or completely change course, if the new way is better. As long as you do finish your story, and don't go hare-ing off to start a new one every time another idea strikes you, you'll win.
