Characters with a Mind of Their Own

Several years ago I read an interview with a prolific author, and though I can’t remember which one, something she said really stuck with me. She said that her characters told the story… that they were in charge of the book, not her.

Frankly, I thought her comment was ridiculous with a capital R. I mean, come on… characters are fictional, and as the author, you’re in control of everything in the book.

But once I started writing novels, I realized she was right: characters truly have a mind of their own. And sometimes… well, sometimes they surprise you.

I experienced this phenomenon while working on All the Right Places. Everything was going fine. The hero, Quinn O’Brien, and the heroine, Amelia Winger, were behaving themselves (or at least they were behaving the way I wanted them to). But then suddenly, one of my secondary characters, Amelia’s best friend, Ava Grace Landy, said something that caught me completely off guard.

Ava Grace is an interesting character—one that popped into my imagination fully formed instead of just a seedling of an idea. Like Amelia, Ava Grace grew up in Texas. She won American Star, my fictionalized version of American Idol, The Voice, and Nashville Star combined, and she’s a country music superstar—imagine a mix of Miranda Lambert and Carrie Underwood.

Ava Grace’s dialogue just flowed from my fingers… words just came out of nowhere. Trust me, I know how ridiculous that sounds. How could this character—one I’ve created in my head—say something that I didn’t expect?

But that’s exactly what happened. She responded in a way that was authentic to her character, not the way I had planned her to respond, and I wasn’t very happy about it. I tried to ignore her—to force her to do what I wanted.

But she resisted. And once I stopped trying to tell her what to say and do, she became one of the easiest characters for me to write.

Now, some characters are more malleable than others. Some do as they’re told and don’t argue about it. But some characters… they’ve got a mind of their own, and I have to let them be themselves.

I sound crazy, don’t I?