Fiction Writers! Tell me about your relationship with your characters.

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   healinghands1668posted 12 years ago

   Are you one of those fiction writers whose characters start to take on lives of their own? Do you hold conversations with them, or find that sometimes they just don't want to talk to you? Which character is your favorite companion? Tell me a little about them. This is the place to give love to your brain-children!

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      Jonathan Jancoposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      I am definitely one of those fiction writers. I wrote a book triology that havent finished editing let alone get published, but all of the main characters are teenagers in the first one. The principle female is like a daughter to me in the first part, and then in her adulthood she is more like a wife. I realize that's weird but she is a fiction I created myself. And I do love her so.
      
      Another story I wrote I have a male character who is definitely my alter ego: a reckless time traveler who befriends demons and f***s every woman he meets. Eventually he gets consumed in a bottle that was enchanted by a pagan nun.
      
      There's more but I really could take all night.

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      1. 66

         healinghands1668posted 12 years agoin reply to this

         A long-abandoned project I started with a friend involved a character of mine who was a five-year-old when the story began, but was married with children of her own at the end. It was strange to follow her all that distance and see her growth.

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         1. 61

            Jonathan Jancoposted 12 years agoin reply to this

            I love that!
            I also have this character who was very popular, outgoing and confident as a little boy, who then reaches his thirties only to realize he's introverted, insecure and . . . oh wait, that's my autobiography.
            

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            1. 59

               dfunzyposted 12 years agoin reply to this

               As all those who write know, imagined characters are the creations of the writer's mind and believable characters have minds of their own. Good stories have beginnings, middles and ends, and I have found myself expanding my plot(s) and theme(s) to keep up with the characters, and more often, abandoning characters to write a story.

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2. 66

   2uesdayposted 12 years ago

   I tend to write short stories so I suppose that is a slightly different approach.
   
   For me the nearest I can come to describing my fiction writing process is to say that it is as if I am reporting on something as it unfolds. It is a bit like walking along a path I have never been on before. The characters are developed by the 'show rather than tell' school of writing.

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3. 60

   Merlin Fraserposted 12 years ago

   I am their General and they are mine to command.
   
   I know them and know how they will react to any given situation so all I have to do is to create a simple situation and let them run with it.  I follow and report their progress.

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