Characters with creative control...

[MJ]

So this is something that gets thrown around a lot in writing circles and that is: Do you control your characters or do they have minds of their own?

I'd love to see what some of you think before I post up my ideas on the subject so post away with you answers/discussion points and let's see who's controlling their characters and who has characters controlling them

[guyrjames]

I feel that most of the time, my characters are completely under my control. I'm usually a heavy planner, so I have a lot of my story planned out with certain notes that my main character has to hit. But every now and then my characters get a mind of their own and take me down a different path that I never thought of before. It's definitely fun, and I wish I was able to be less control-freaky and let my characters just write themselves, cause I usually like what they do better...haha. Really good discussion topic.

[Deleted]

My characters are definitely in control. Lol. I start out much like Guy and know exactly where my characters are heading and what needs to happen, however that doesn't seem to be the case now that I am seven episodes in. Lol. I find them drifting into their own people and I can either fight against them or go with the flow and see where they take me. I'm enjoying not being completely in control Lol.

[Jamison]

My characters never cease to surprise me. They find themselves in the driver's seat about 75% of the time. Sometimes I plan for a certain character to say or do something, but end up changing it because of the thought "He/She wouldn't deliver this line this way," or "There's no way he/she would do this."

I think giving your characters more control keeps things more natural and interesting. Of course there are times when you have to maneuver a character a certain way, but overall, as your characters develop within the fictional verse, they are more than likely to come to life in the real world as well.

[Alex Matthews]

i find it split evenly - some characters I have a definate path planned out for them, whereas others, it evolves as I'm writing them, based on the facets of the character that have been set out.

[Tommy West]

Mine is fairly equal, I like to plan out where my characters are going and sometimes it won't make sense for them to do what I've planned so I'll have to come up with something else that fits the character better. I think sometimes it's a lot more natural to be true to the character rather than the plot you want to do, if only because that can lead to characters being horribly out of character.