Scans_Daily

I am a writer, and frankly I've never bought this "my characters just got away from me" bit. It strikes me (depending on the quality of the finished product) as either an excuse for slipshod, inconsistent, poorly-planned writing, or as a way for the writer to seem oh-so-whimsical and precious in interviews, prefaces, afterwords and such.

Characters come out of your mind. You create them and you see them through to the end. Even if the characters change radically between the inspiration and the finished manuscript, it is still you who made those changes.

Now if someone else (with or without your authorization or even knowledge) writes your characters, then yes, they do "get away from" you and do things you'd never expected. And if those characters genuinely reach something deep down in enough readers, they can indeed take on a life of their own. Maybe even a richer life than some of those who read them. Richard Bach writes in Illusions: "If you will practice being fictional for a while, you will understand that fictional characters are sometimes more real than people with bodies and heartbeats."

If that happens to your characters, that's a wonderful thing even if you never live to see it. Nevertheless, when it's just you writing a character, then the character does exactly what you tell her, no matter what justifications or dressed-up rhetoric you use to convince yourself otherwise.