Comments on: When they don’t wanna

By: Tiana Smith

Tiana Smith — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 17:02:39 +0000

“I’m not changing who the characters are; I’m changing their circumstances.” <– this. With this take, your characters also face more conflict, which can be good for readers. I often will take this approach, it just takes longer to make all the details work out. Either that or I go with option 3 and see where it takes me. I agree that this leaves more things open for surprises.

By: Chicory

Chicory — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 15:02:23 +0000

What Mary said. My characters don’t like to give hints either. They just glare at me while I frantically wrack my brain going `what is your problem? C’mon, a little help here would be nice.’

By: Mary

Mary — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 02:52:48 +0000

My characters don't want to go left instead. They just sulk about going right until I flip it around so they go left instead. Then they reveal that was what they wanted.

By: green_knight

green_knight — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 23:37:26 +0000

Irene,
that’s interesting -for me it’s exactly the opposite way round. If I try to plan scenes they’re clicheed and predictable; my characters come up with stuff that simply amazes me, and they’re much more ‘in character’ and rooted in the world than I am.

By: Irene

Irene — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 14:20:49 +0000

Aw, thank you very much for the wonderful post!

I have to admit I’m struggling with the same question at the moment. I have my current WIP all nicely planned, but from time to time my chars just won’t listen to me

However, one thing I did notice that whenever I try and follow my chars in the directions they want to go, the resulting scenes prove remarkably clicheed and predictable… It reminds me of this famous bit of writing advice, “when you’re coming up with a story idea, disregard the first three as most likely they’ve already been done to death”. Probably, here it’s the same process at work. When I plan a scene I have plenty of time to make sure my chars act and think in a fresh, unclicheed way, but when I allow them to think for themselves they apparently take the path of least resistance…

By: Victoria Scribens

Victoria Scribens — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 14:08:33 +0000

Ah, this is just where I am. My viewpoint character has a method, which is to know where he starts and where he’s going and go full-tilt at the latter. (This annoys everyone else in his vicinity, especially since it usually works — eventually.) I was just about at the point where the plot starts to wrap up, with a reversal planned by the viewpoint character. Then no one else reacted the way I was expecting, and three of them turn out to have way different motivations than I’d realised … but as I was working through all of what would need to be changed this morning, I realised that this will make the story far better and resolve a whole bunch of subplots I wasn’t sure how to bring in, let alone resolve. Fortunately, I was already planning a lot of editing…