When characters go off-script, and why working doesn’t only mean ‘doing stuff’.

You might’ve heard writers say things like ‘my characters keep on doing things I don’t want them to’, or ‘my characters are always surprising me’. For a long time I thought this was nonsense‌—‌if you’re writing the story, surely you’re in control. Those characters are your inventions. They do what you want them to.

But this happens to me. I’ll be writing, and because of my planning I’ll have a solid idea of where the scene’s going. Then I’ll have a line of dialogue come to me, and before I’m ...