Kind of a weird question, I know, but I'm going to give two examples from my current WIP to illustrate that in large part, I don't so much make up stories as create characters and worlds, then watch them interact and write down what I see.

First example: I have a scene near the beginning of my book where the hero, an apprentice, makes out with his master's daughter, gets caught, and gets the stuffing beaten out of him. Despite the harsh punishment he receives, I expect to be asked by some people: Why did you feel the need to include this scene? What's the point of it? What are you trying to teach?

Retrospectively, I can offer a narrative justification for this scene, but I did not have it in mind when I wrote it. The question "why did you feel the need to put this in the book?" is completely alien to me. My most natural response is "Well, it happened, and it seemed interesting." I confess I did have my doubts about including the scene, primarily for reasons of space, but from the moment it popped into my head, there was not a doubt in my mind that it happened.

Second case in point; this one so weird, it had my brother declaring me crazy: The girl in this scene is blonde. I originally wrote her with blonde hair the first time I described her, then changed it to red. But despite the fact that I had written the word "red" to describe her hair, when I watched the scene play out, her hair was blonde. As a result, I had to go back and change what I had written; not because I find blondes more attractive, nor because having blonde hair makes the story work better, but simply because this character is blonde and I made a factual error writing her with red hair.

This, incidentally, is why my rewrites are so minimal. I fix spelling and continuity errors and clean up the prose, but I almost never change the actual events of the story, except to cut out non-essential scenes to save space.

So how about you guys? Do you "make up" stories or do they just happen? If someone asks you "Why is this in your book? What does it illustrate?" are you inclined to say "Well, it happened, and I couldn't very well leave it out," rather than, "It serves as a symbolic reminder of the doctrine of..."

I think I'm rather like you that way. I'm not sure I quite think about it like that, in terms of putting it in 'because it happened', but I definitely don't put things in because I think that should happen, I put it in because it happens. I will sometimes manipulate events to fit what I want to happen, but it's always manipulating circumstances, not the actual characters. Well, not quite, because I'm not good enough with characters yet to keep them perfectly in character, but that's still the idea behind it. I think my sister tends to do things that way too, but I'm not sure.

Yes and no. I do, for instance, change events when I edit, usually to make the plot hold together better. However. Those are probably the events I'm less clear on. When I write, everything that happens isn't clear in my mind. Frequently, I don't know how a story is going to end, and then sometimes when I finish something, I'm less than pleased with what ending I came up with.

I do completely understand the whole "it's just the way it happened" thing, though. I suspect that's why certain bad things happen to some of my characters. (Sorry, Llewellyn.) I get the idea, and it just sticks after that. I'm not entirely sure I've experienced anything quite like your second example (although I voted yes in the poll) but I think there have been experiences close to that, anyway.

I'm certainly not likely to ever be saying something along the lines of "It serves as a symbolic reminder..."

Hah. Example of things being "just the way it happened." One of my stories has a slightly futuristic setting without magic or anything, but I'd never intended it to be Earth, since that would require more work than I really wanted to do, and I've never really written a story set on Earth before. And then I was picturing a scene where the city my main character, Rainer, is in gets mostly blown up by dive-bombers and other bombs...and Rainer starts mumbling scraps of the Lord's Prayer and Psalm 23 while wandering around in the wreckage. And ever since then, I knew the story had to be in the "real world." Yeah, maybe I could have kept that out and kept it in a fictional world, but it just fit so well.

Most of my world building happens through dreams and thought pictures but that's really the only bit I create. I did have to go back and rewrite the first couple of chapters because as I got to know the characters I looked back and thought "Tanner wouldn't do that."

My trouble is that because all of the characters are so real, I have trouble focusing it sometimes. I have a few side characters that I know are having a conflict but it really has nothing to do with anything as far as I can see in the story. I can't seem to let go of it though because I know the characters and their problems are important to me.

I've always had a little difficulty explaining how I do my characters...

I control them, and then again I don't. Perhaps you could call me the referee, or guide. My characters act out of their own personality in a very real way, to where I don't always know what a character will do right off until I write it. I know them enough to know how they'd act in certain situations, and I can tell when they're acting out of character. So in that sense, they are their own entity. My stories get shaped around my characters, not vice versa. Sure there are goals that I need to be acheived by certain characters because of how I want the plot to unfold, but I'm not super stingy about how the characters go about achieving that goal in their own means. A good example would be the novel I wrote this past year. I had the beginning, the end, and the theme of the story set in stone, but the middle was just loosely put in there with some little tidbits I wanted to include at some point in the story. As I wrote, not only did a character die that I didn't expect, but the entire middle section of the story except for one event and a handful of those tidbit elements deviated from my novel outline completely. However, it still held together in a cohesive manner because of the characters. All I did was follow them where they went, added elements to make sure the story worked towards the end goal. That's where the guidance part came in. I had boundries, but the characters were free to work within those boundries.

That is how I write, as a general rule. Both the characters and I work together on the novel, they within it, and me on the outside. I give the situation and goal, they react. That's basically how I do it. I will create characters with general starting points in their personality, and some guidlines on how I need them to end up, but that's another topic.

I used to write in a purely stream-of-consciousness, as it "happens in my mind" style. But that led to big flaws over a long period, partly because of how young I was when writing. Today, I am re-writing that old story, so I more or less have a prescribed order to go about things, so the question isn't perfectly relevant.
More or less I write by watching a movie play out in my head. Thus, I do get some of what you are experiencing, but only to a limited extent.

I voted "no" because I haven't (as far as I can remember anyway) ever gone and rewritten something for the reasons you described.
But I have had instances where the story seemed to take a turn that I wasn't expecting (though it was a very small thing). I actually sort of did the opposite of you, I didn't change something because I lacked knowledge of my character but had still "seen" something happen and decided it must be the way it is, and I should make sense of it. Does that make sense? I hope that was relevant somehow...

That's exactly how I am as well. My characters are quite real. I don't know what they will say until they say it.
I'll post more later, I have to hurry off.

OK, who voted "No, and you're crazy"?

I didn't. Cause honestly I do it all the time. Another example of writer oddity? The other day I accidentally called my cousin by my character's name.

I was wondering that too! XD

Ha! That's awesome!

I voted the last option. I do not write my stories how I would like them to be written, I write them how they happen. * laughs * Your example of red versus blonde hair was quite similar to lots of things I have had happen to me....

For example, there was this one scene – it was at the beginning of my novel, and I had to write my novel, so I was trying write it. Anyone want to guess how many times I completely rewrote the scene? * raises eyebrows * More than 15. Not including extreme editing bouts on an already written version. I was driven absolutely insane by that scene, and I still view it with distaste whenever I think about it to this day.

I am not the person to give up, but eventually I just couldn't waste anymore time on it. I couldn't tell you what was wrong with all those scenes, but it was as if when I finished them, the rest of the story didn't belong to it – I would have to write a whole new story from that point on to what I had planned in order to keep that scene in.

I went on planning other parts of the story though, and one day I met this new character, the friend of one of my other characters, and they were on the wall talking to each other after my character had come back from a long journey. He started telling my character about what had happened that fateful day (apparently he had been there). I just sat there and listened to them. And. guess. what. I had the wrong character in the scene all the times I had written it! Talk about wanting to bang my head against the wall.... * deep sigh *

So now what I do to find out about a story is mainly talk to the characters. Or rather, listen to what Rwebhu learned from my characters. Would you believe it, I actually used to argue with Rwebhu. * shakes head * No more, though.

That is just one of many stories. Enough stories that I learned eventually to listen.

I know that the stories do come from me somehow, though, because the stories I had when I was younger are immensely different from the stories I have now. They change with me. * tilts head *

There's a movie coming out where a struggling writer writes about a girl he thinks would fall in love with him, and then wills her to life.

So yeah.

*grimace* My charries are very real to me. *glomps them* But that movie sounds kinda sad.

Honestly, it isn't so much that my characters are...real. I don't USUALLY have voices in my head (although they do come to me and talk to me in dreams and such)...usually. Very occasionally, I do...but...generally it's just that I have them so well fleshed out I KNOW them. I know everything about them, how they act, what they would do in certain situations, and to just CHANGE that, is like creating a completely different person! It doesn't WORK!

Exactly! It just don't work.

Why did you vote the last option? I'm confused.

Edit: first option. Sorry. Typo....

Sometimes, my characters' grammar gets critiqued, but I refuse to change it simply because "that's the way they talk."
And I changed the skin color of one of my characters once, but it totally didn't stick at all. I had four friends in the story who were all Caucasian, and most of the characters were as well, so I was going to make one African-American, but it just didn't work.

Two of my characters once fell in love without telling me. Another one revealed something about their world that forced me to restart an entire story.

One of my favorite things about writing is the moment when one of your characters surprises you. You do all this planning, you add all this detail, you create their background and think you know everything there is about them when all of a sudden they do or say something that catches you off guard. They reveal a detail you've never thought of before and it turns out to be better than anything you could've planned.


Sounds like one of those moments where you needed to kill your darlings. I should know, I've had to cut out scenes I really loved and spent a lot of time crafting that didn't quite belong with the rest of the story.

My characters did that once too. I tried to convince them not to because it sorta messed things up, but what could I say?

Mine too.

Well, I didn't exactly love that scene... I hated it by the time I had gotten to the third or fourth rewrite. But it was necessary to the plot. So it is a good thing I finally got it right.

The two of you that voted that I'm crazy had better show yourselves.

You are crazy, but I didn't vote that you are. You're not crazy in a bad way, don't worry.

* wishes there was vote for 'yes, and you're crazy' * * grins to herself *

Maybe Rwebhu tells you more and more things as she sees you are ready.

And of course as she can get you to stop making things up.


I used to pray for "my world," and it did not seem right. Then I finally realized that there is no such thing as "my" world, nor even "a" world. It is everything, though that does not mean that there is nothing else.
Now I pray for my recording.

Heh. Yeah. It's weird....

* giggles * I hate it when my characters chat with me while I'm trying to write! It is distracting to say the least.

Another very queer experience I had when trying to write a scene the wrong way was when I was writing it about the wrong person...I couldn't get it right, and I couldn't figure out why -- until I realized that I had swapped the personality of him and a different person I had in the story. I was not a very good writer then, or a very good character maker, but I still couldn't manage writing it the wrong way. When I swapped the personalities it wrote out as smoothly as I could have wished.

* nods * Yes, maybe it was that...I tried to discover things that she didn't want to tell me yet, very often, and when she wouldn't I made them up.

In my signature where it says, "my Otherworld," I think of that with the same inflections as the phrase, "my Liege." I write the stories, the world is entirely separate from me.

Actually what I write that includes earth is more my creation. It is more free like fiction and Fantasy to me.

I voted for the first one, because my characters have a mind of their own.

I'll start my story with a character that has, let's say, light brown hair and blue eyes and is the main character, and by the end, she'll have dark brown hair, black eyes and be a very minor character. Which is annoying because I then have to rewrite the entire beginning because she's out of character there.

What did Moffat say..."You know a character's real when they keep secrets from you"? Mine are certainly real.

Scenes also come to life that way as well. You start a story expecting certain characters to live to the end, but suddenly you find yourself writing their death!

Ow. >_<

Mm. Frustrating, that.

I am constantly frustrated that my characters never have the courage to show up on paper like they run around in my head.

On the other hand, I have two in particular (Paddy, from an unwritten suspense story; and Adrian, from a WIP sci-fi/superhero story) that are quite literally larger than life. Adrian was not even supposed to be in his story to begin with, and now he's pretty much taken it over. Paddy...well, let's just say I would marry him if he were a real guy. (And I don't ever say that about my characters because it's just weird and plain not true. I don't set out...writing guys I could have a crush on. That's...freakish.)

My worlds on the other hand...I take time (occasionally) to do worldbuilding, but then I forget to put that info in the story or else never have the chance. And if I do no worldbuilding whatsoever, I don't describe ANYTHING.

So, yeah. That's me in a nutshell.


Also, my stories tend to come from one scene, one line. I usually build characters and worlds into it with rare exceptions.

I voted yes.


Something like that happened to me before, I was simply telling a friend a story when my character suddenly jumped in. I couldn't help laughing and grinning after that.


Just as Jane said, my characters can end up dying by themselves, or even changing to the enemies side.


Another reason why I always believe my writing could be better, since whatever is in my head never comes out the way I want when writing.


I create my characters, but they still have their own personality, I guide them through their story, and even though their endings are planned. But they still manage to get past my storyline, and change it.

Almost all my character conversations are pre-conversed, I talk to them, though not aloud (I would be deemed crazy if so). And all (except few) my characters hair and eye color somehow seem to change after very paragraph. Finalizing physical description is one of the last things I do. =)

For me, I tend to be much more conscious of myself when I'm writing than when I'm doing other creative activities. I consciously think, "Okay, so now these people have to meet and do so-and-so," and "Somehow I need to get this guy here, so let me have him travel for so-and-so reason," and, yes, "It serves as a symbolic reminder of the doctrine of..." and so on. Sure, I do sometimes get surprises from my characters - one night a character suddenly revealed something quite shocking about himself to me, and then I couldn't sleep. But generally I'm quite aware of myself and feel pretty separate from my characters, even if I love them!

On the other hand, when I world-build, I just...I don't know. It just happens. Like with the languages I make up - I get a kernel of an idea about how some grammatical structure might work, and then it rolls around in my head for a while and picks up bits of ideas that are scattered around in there, and then eventually I get a sense of the feeling of the language - its personality, its essence. And then actually working out is pretty easy, because I know somehow what should be in it. I know it should have animate/inanimate gender, and it shouldn't have case, and it should put adjectives after nouns, and it shouldn't be ergative. The details, like what exactly constitutes animate/inanimate gender (I always get stuck on body parts, for instance), can sometimes be tricky. But I know what the general structure of the language should look like. Same with my imaginary countries, or historical characters - I get the feeling of what they are or who they are, and then everything just flows.

I wonder if that's because my writing is meant for other people to read, while my worldbuilding is really for myself alone...and so I want my writing to be well thought-out and carefully structured so it's enjoyable to others. But my worlds are just for me, and so as long as I enjoy them, it doesn't matter if they make no sense or are horribly cliched or whatever it is...


Yup. That's exactly it. It is a lovely feeling. The funny thing is that I also get it when creating languages - I suddenly have the most brilliant idea about how some grammatical structure can work, and then I have to chuck all the pretty conjugation charts I made of the old boring structure...


Too true! It's also frustrating for me that when I'm...well, my sister and I call it playing pretending games, but it sounds more cool if you call it, say, live-action role-playing, or improv theater...well, when we're making up a story together and acting it out, our characters usually really come alive. But then I sit down and try to write a story and the characters talk like example sentences out of the dictionary. Sigh.


Haha, I'm the same, usually I am really not a visual person - I have a horrible visual memory and my dreams are never very vivid - and so I never imagine how my characters look in much depth. Now and then I'll hit on a detail - say, somebody has freckles, or messy blonde hair. But generally I'm horrible at coming up with my characters' appearances. So I try to use characteristic mannerisms and so on to describe them instead...as much as I can!

It's so strange to hear about people like this... because for me, appearance is one of the things that makes a character its most vibrant in my head. Not that it's actually important for their personality... but in my head personality is heavily linked to appearance. (I once based an entire character analysis of a real person off of her hair, actually. ) When I want to make sure I remember a character I've thought of, I always have to give him an appearance. I never forget then.

I do go into a lot of detail in my description though.... And I can never make them look anything but what they are. Sometimes I go for almost an hour trying different details to see if they're the right ones.

What does it feel like to not see your characters? * curious *

* nods * That's very similar to how it seems for me, when I get into world building something. I don't feel at all like I'm 'making something up'. It's just there, and it has to be the way it is.

It's pretty awesome.

Very, very real.

I rarely ever make anything up myself. I'll be watching a film or reading a book or just daydreaming, and somebody will walk into my head and catch my eye. I eventually start to write their story.

And then they like to walk back into my room while I type and alert me to something I did wrong, or remind me of a bit of information they tactfully forgot to give me, which means I have to rewrite whole scenes, chapters, or even books...

Basically, my characters and worlds are very real to me. I have the ability to withdraw inside my head to my own little world. I've created one inside my head just for myself; and when reality gets to be too tough, I have the ability to just visit that world. It's real to me, just like my characters are.

I don't have any control over my stories... it's all the characters. I'm just along for the ride.

I'm can really relate to this, Juliet. My characters descriptions are very vivid to me. I struggle with individuality sometimes I think within characters, but I don't struggle with descriptions. Then again, I have a very vivid imagination and I have crazy dreams that are very vivid haha!

This is a very common phenomenon amongst writers. I have had basic aesthetic traits making themselves known seemingly spontaneously since I was a beginner writer. Not at the very beginning - I'd written 20k words as a 11-12 year old before it started. I have heard many published authors describing more complex character attributes (motivations, back stories, deceptions, etc.) "just being true." My theory is that the better an author you are, the more your subconscious takes over creative duties.

I think you're right. Well... or maybe sometimes you have your subconscious telling you stuff all along, but the quality of it improves as you get better. I think it can happen either way.

Honestly, I think it depends on the writer. People can write and think about their writing in incredibly different ways, and so I think some authors will be more self-aware and some authors will be more subconscious...and becoming more aware can be valuable just as becoming more subconscious can be valuable. But maybe this is just me trying to justify my own somewhat analytical detachment from my stories.

Eek, I just realized how "the better an author you are" sounded. I'm not saying people who don't have spontaneous story development probably springing from their subconscious aren't good writers. I meant that those who DO have it happen get more frequent and more advanced spontaneous developments as they mature as an author.

No doubt whether your subconscious ever starts working on your story for you depends on your writing development style and the way you personally process thoughts.

I've been able to "assign" my brain something in my story to figure out or create, and then come back to the subject a few days later and suddenly have a solution. Very useful. It's something I learned with practice.

Oh, I see what you mean now. Thanks for clarifying I agree!

Though I do think that a more skilled author will be able to do more without conscious thought...e.g. a better writer might not have to think too much about dialog tags, or when to shift into a description, or something (though I'm sure it would vary with different people), and then they can focus more on stuff like characters and themes and whatnot.


Wow! That's very cool. I know that with computer problems, I'll often fall asleep and then wake up in the morning with a solution. But otherwise I just think about things consciously.

If I recall correctly, I got the idea from my Father, who is a computer programmer. I definitely recommend experimenting with assigning tasks to your subconscious!

The other day I was reading a passage in Adler & Van Doren's How to Read a Book (which I think should get an award for Amusing Name) which made me think of this topic. They were talking about how when you learn a skill at first, you need to learn all the different parts of the skill separately. But once you have actually mastered the skill, you put the different parts together without thinking and can focus on their unity more easily. Talking about skiing:

So perhaps for somebody like me, first I need to consciously learn how to create a character or construct a plot twist. But then once I get the hang of how to make a character or a plot twist, I can do it without thinking; it comes naturally. And then I can focus on the more difficult aspects of writing, or I can attempt a more complex character or twisty plot.

Anyways, there are a million perfectly valid ways to write a good story, but I thought this might be relevant.

Oh, certainly. Even better when the characters you killed off decide to ressurect themselves... - Although i prefer that development usually.



Quite right - immensely.