Why Do Authors Say, “My Characters Won’t Behave!”

Authors sometimes struggle to rein in characters that have a mind of their own. They threaten to control the story and take events in an unexpected direction. The dilemma is what to do with these wayward spirits. Is it wise to keep to the script and force them to behave, or should the author run with their personalities and see what happens? To ignore the nagging voice of the character and make him stick to the script may turn him into a cardboard character. All the while, the author’s instinct screams, “Wait. He wouldn’t do that. No one is this one-dimensional.”

When my characters won’t behave, I try to remember these things about them:

Our characters are complex beings and have fears and desires that drive them to make choices. The consequences of these choices may surprise the author as much as the reader. This is not without risk. If it doesn’t work out, it’s back to the drawing board. Fortunately the drawing board is the place to improve the manuscript. If this is what character development demands, our story is in good company. Though author techniques vary, some of the best known writers allow their characters to develop the story. In this Goodreads interveiw, https://www.goodreads.com/interviews/show/1262.Dean_Koontz, Dean Koontz, author of the popular Jane Hawk series, describes how he gave Jane free rein. ” I hadn’t gotten very far—maybe 10 to 15 pages of manuscript—when I understood it was going to be this “Crichton-esque” bit of technology. I read a lot of science, and I’ve always seen a potential dark side to it. And then Jane started taking the story where she wanted to take it, as really good characters always do. It sort of evolved into that. ”

Other authors have experienced the characters taking the story where they want to take it. Charles Dickens heard the voices of his characters that informed him of how to write their stories. ” Every word said by his characters was distinctly heard by him,” one critic stressed in 1872.  Dickens characters were the driving force behind his stories.

Here is an excerpt from an article,”Speaking of Tolkien”, on “The Science Fiction and Fantasy” (https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/90480/did-tolkien-originally-intend-to-write-a-very-different-lord-of-the-rings ) Someone wrote, “… many great writers let their characters and setting come to life and take the story in unexpected directions, and it’s to his credit that they are so believable and unique, and thus could tell such a grand story. “