YES! when your characters start telling you the story, that's when you know you're doing something right.
I wouldn't call you an ass. I hate it when people talk about their characters as though they're living beings in their minds. 'My character keeps bugging me to write this and that!' It's like, 'no, you just had a creative idea.' If your characters are separate entities talking to you, you should probably see someone about that. Schizophrenia isn't a natural part of the creative process. It's true, they're tools. You need to tell a story through them, not about them. They'll be authentic if you're a good storyteller.
Looks like I need to book an appointment with a psychiatrist then. To me, my characters are real and do tell me things. That's my view and you have yours but I think you are very rude to assume that people who think of their characters the way I think of mine, have a mental problem which requires professional help.
I wasn't actually accusing you of having mental problem. In my opinion, I just believe that it's a bit delusional. I'm not saying people like that actually suffer mental illness, just that if they really experienced this phenomenon instead of just thinking of it that way, they would be. Hearing voices that don't come from you is classed as mental illness, I'm afraid. Luckily, for most authors, the voices they hear are simply their own creative musings.
Glad you clarified that. Although, I recently tried to explain this to someone (a non writer) who looked at me as if I had two heads.
"Tools" sounds a little cold; one doesn't care about a tool, one uses it. But I agree with you in this way, that perhaps the question really should be "How do you make your characters real?" Because they don't create themselves and stand around waiting to be discovered; we have to work to form them. As for how I'm at least trying to do that, I give my major characters parents, childhood impressions, youthful follies, and past experiences in general, and draw out the present-day implications of it all. At the same time, I look at who I initially conceived my characters to be in their present day, and consider what sort of backgrounds they might have had to get where they are. I work it from both ends. However, I refuse to make them slaves to their pasts. People change, grow, and adapt, and my characters can, too.
I always liked the Pixar approach - characters who have this strong self-concept, a grand passion that actually creates their flaws. For example, in Toy Story, Woody is so intensely proud of being Andy's favorite toy that he doesn't want to share it with Buzz, so he makes mistake after a mistake to preserve this self-concept of his until extreme events make him reassess it. And I think that's how human beings are - we cling to the ideas we have about ourselves and only big events can make us change that perception.
A god story wouldn't be a good story without some kind of massive event that make the characters reassess their own lives/parts.
