An author’s peculiar relationship with characters

Ageless, Emma thought, watching them. As if the innumerable years of their lives had merely distilled and refined the essence of who they were. She couldn’t imagine a creation that didn’t contain them, or a future where they didn’t travel together – the Huntress and her gentler sister of the forest, the Smith and the flamboyant Herald … and the Lord of Fire they followed in unshakable loyalty, Lyr.

The quote above is from my soon-to-be published second novel, The Asfari’s Homecoming, and it is a  passage where I, as the author, am speaking most clearly in my own voice. You would think, from one perspective, that an author is always speaking in their own voice. But for those authors who are truly character-driven, the characters take on lives of their own. They speak for themselves, after a while, and resist efforts to bind them to plots and purposes that don’t fit what they have become. A character-driven author listens first, and then writes. And in time, the characters become as close as family, with all the same emotional bonds. You share their triumphs and their failings, their loves and hates; you laugh and cry with them.

(I hope I’m not only speaking for myself, here. Could be, I’m just plain crazy.)

At any rate, I had only wanted to tell a good story with the first novel. And then the characters insisted that I couldn’t just leave it there. With the third book, which I’m currently working on, I wanted to move in another direction and far into the future … but they are there as well.

She couldn’t imagine a creation that didn’t contain them, or a future where they didn’t travel together…

I know, Emma. I feel the same way.