When Characters Take Over
I am the most left brained writer you can imagine. I have worksheets for everything – characters, scenes, story 
structure, show & tell – you name it, I’ve got a worksheet for it (well, maybe not dialogue – for that and editing I use highlighting, but that’s another post). The point is that I plan out my scenes thoroughly before I ever sit down at my computer and begin to write. I fill out a scene chart, I have my story structure all detailed and I pre-write to get myself into the scene and figure out exactly what’s going to happen when I do actually open up my computer and begin to write.
And then – sometimes – a really strange thing happens. You’d think with so much planning and thinking things through, when I write what happens is what I planned to happen, but no. Sometime my characters just take over. Sometimes my scene gets hijacked by things that just happen as I writing. It really throws me when this happens because I plan my scenes so thoroughly.
It happened to me last week. I was writing a scene that I could see perfectly clearly in my mind. My heroine is called in to her mother’s formal drawing room (this is a Georgian romance, set in about 1780). She walks in completely disheveled in an old worn-out dress with straw hanging off it and her hair is a mess – she’s just been rolling around in the barn, playing with a new litter of puppies. She even brings one of the puppies in with her. She is called in to meet the hero (although she wasn’t aware of this) who is there, and impeccably dressed. He takes one look at her and says, “No! Absolutely not.” She’s is so startled by this that she squeezes the poor, little puppy in her arms and it pees all over the front of her dress further humiliating her. Now, I never planned for the puppy to pee on her. It never occurred to me when I was planning the scene that it should do that. It just happened. The hero said no, and the heroine reacted, scaring the poor, already terrified, puppy.
I was shocked. Amazed, even. How could this have happened? Of course, I thought it was terrific. I mean, I wanted my heroine to be in a terrible situation, and this addition only made everything so much worse for the poor girl. I love this scene! And it annoys me to no end that I had to completely change the plot of the story so that the scene no longer fits and I can’t use it. Argh!
Oh, I’ll find some time, some story where I can use it, just because it is so wonderful – but not in this story. Now, I’ve completely reinvented the character (she is no longer the type to play with puppies, let alone carry them into the drawing room), and therefore the plot of the story. It’ll be good (I hope, I have yet to write it), but it will be completely different and I can’t wait to see what this new character does despite my meticulous plans for her.
Have you ever had this happen to you? How has it worked out – for the better, or worse?
