When Your Characters Take Over

What in the heck do we do when our characters take over the story? (Don't tell me they don't, because they do! LOL) This most often happens to me when I am in the flow, when I allow the story to tell itself. When I go back to reread and edit, sometimes it is as if I am reading it for the first time. I have no clue what I wrote, but it seems to work. This is the good side of my characters taking over the story.

The bad side comes when they stop me from writing, when they insist that their character needs to do something else, be somewhere else, interact differently with the other characters - and they are adament about getting their way! Sometimes I can do what they want, other times I have no clue how to create their version of life.

When I have no clue how to create their version of life, I generally end up going back to the beginning of the story, and editing it to fit the storyline that my characters want. 

Bottom line - we need to honor our characters, who they are, how they act, what makes them tick. If our characters are real, the story will be real ... and will more than likely sell!

(c) October 2019 Bonnie Cehovet

Reproduction prohibited without written permission of the author. 

How To Get Characters To Interact

You have your plot worked out, and you have defined your characters. The next step is getting your characters to play nice and interact well with each other. The point here is to make sure that they interact in a realistic manner - one that flows, that does not seem forced. How do we do that?

 Look back to how you defined the character - what do they like, what do they dislike, what is important to them. How do they see themselves? Are they leaders or followers, are they educated or blue collar, ar they risk takers, or do they fade into the woodwork? Our characters have to be true to themselves. Readers that can identify with the characters will stay with the story, they will become part of it. And they will look for us to be putting new stories out there.

Characters must be multi-dimensional. A one-dimensional charcter will lose the reader quickly - they are boring, and they really don't have a story to tell - either their own, or the one they are creating with the characters they are interacting with. Each character must also be a  unique individual - a stereotypical portrayal wil also lose the reader, because they will know what the character is going to do before they do it.

The easiest way to get your characters to interact well is to take examples from your own life -  people that you have interacted with, or how you have observed people interacting with each other. Take into account things like body language, and what that says about the person. Build a back-story into your character so that your readers will understand why they are acting as they are. Adding traits that are even a little annoying to the other person creates both humor and tension in a story. Relationships are not static - they change slightly with the events in the story. This reflects the reality of life.

Include lots of details! Who your characters are, why they act as they do, what their fears are, and how the environment plays into the story are very important. Make sure that the dialoge reflects the character correctly. Then there is the internal dialoge - where your characters are basically talking to themselves. Here we see the characters thought process, and their fears and anxieties.   

Characters that interact well with each other, and are backed up by solid minor characters, will write your story for you!

In my next blog, I will be talking about how far we want to develop supporting characters.

(c) June 2018 Bonnie Cehovet

Reproduction prohibited without written permission.