Fictional Characters Are People Too!

*This post first appeared as a guest post on Dani’s Book Review Blog as part of the blog tour for Rebound Revival.  You can find the post here.

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Jamie and Claire from Outlander

You’ve done it.

You know you have.

You get sucked into a book and fall in love with the world, with the characters, with the hero.  You’re sad when the book is over because you feel like you’ve lost your friends.

And then you meet someone who’s read the same book (or harass your friends until they read it too), and you discuss these people like they’re real.  Just like you talk about your mom or your brother or your best friend from college (unless you’re talking to your best friend from college, but, you know, when you’re talking to someone else).

For a writer it’s even more intense.  When writers talk about our characters, we talk about getting to know them, learning about them, letting the characters lead the way through the story.  We talk about characters being uncooperative and not doing what we planned for them.  They come to us fully formed and we have to figure out who they are, how they act, and what makes them tick.  (At least that’s how my characters are, especially the main characters.  For example, Lance from my book Summer Fling was originally going to be named Connor.  But then he was like, “Hey!  My name is Lance, not Connor.”  And that was that.)

A few months ago my friend Leslie MacAdam and I were chatting about one of her books (and her books are awesome, so you totally need to check them out after you’ve gotten your fill of mine), specifically the characters.  She commented that she loved it that I acted like her characters were real too.

I told her that it’s because they are real.

I know, that sounds like the men in white coats need to come take me to the pretty white room with squishy walls where they give me a special jacket that lets me hug myself.

I know that they’re not real in the sense that we could take a road trip and go visit them, stay in their guest rooms, and eat their food.  Of course fictional characters aren’t real like that.

But they exist in our collective consciousness.  We all know and love Harry, Ron, and Hermione.  Or Jamie and Claire.  Or Christian and Anastasia.  Or fill in your favorite characters.  We, as readers, give them life.

It’s sort of like the Velveteen Rabbit.  A toy becomes real when it’s loved enough.

And so does a fictional character.

What do you think?  Let me know in the comments!

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