When the character takes over the story

This is my first NaNo and I am loving it (blood, sweat, tears and all!). My book has taken on an entirely different direction than what I had planned, so much that even my title will not remain the same. I have 4 MFCs and one has really just taken over. I have found in the last few days that my writing in a million times better when I am writing in HER voice. She's a saucy chick--insecure in her own life but demanding in MINE, insisting that HER story is the one needing to be told.

I am going with it. This character has turned out to be very fun to write and I'm sure in my edits/rewrites, her voice will come out even stronger when I let her win this battle and be THE main character (I think she just hates to share anything, even the title of MFC!). O.o

You have hit that magic point when the characters become real. She'll start talking to you in the weirdest places, even the grocery store. Be thankful that she's a contemporary character. One writer said that her character started talking to her, and he was a pirate!

BTW, my current characters were minor characters who became real in a last-week NaNo free-write-for-word-count. I aged them 10 years and gave them their own story, which I am writing now.

One of my lead characters is sharing scenes with a woman who's fierce, so I wore high heels when I was writing it so I'd have the right frame-of-mind. I'm a 40-years-in-Chucks girl, so it was clearly a foreign place for me!

Mine did that. I let her lead for awhile. The plot straighten back out again and made plot that made sense. I nor realize this was a good way for the plot to go. I am going to have to go back and add to the beginning to add more substance to the end, but I am glad with where we ended up.

I think this happens to me whenever I sit down to write. Even now, when I wrote an outline of all the plot points, my characters have done what they wanted. Sometimes I manage to rein them in and bring them back on track but they generally do what they like and (usually) I like the direction they take. :)

Congrats Kim, teaandscribbles, and jreb00 on your wins! Hard work! Kitty, keep at it. I didn't finish last year, but my start is good, and I still think I can make something great out of it when I get the chance.

I remember the first time I read about characters doing their own thing independently of the author, and I thought it was crazy until it happened to me. That's when the characters are real. I still think about characters in books I wrote years ago, and they are real to me. I say go with it. Although mine currently has a frustrating attraction to her ex-husband when the bartender at her favorite pub is much better for her, I'm going to roll with it and let her figure it out for herself (I hope).