course it’s the writer who creates the characters; but characters who are—in a real sense—alive will eventually break free of the writer’s control and begin to act independently. I’m not the only one who feels this—many fiction writers acknowledge it. In fact, unless that phenomenon occurs, writing the novel becomes a strained, painful, and trying process. When a novel is on the right track, characters take on a life of their own, the story moves forward by itself, and a very happy situation evolves whereby the novelist just ends up writing down what he sees happening in front of him. And in
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