My characters are writing themselves

I have like, two pages of dialogue that just sort of happened so I could figure out how to do something. Epic fail or epic win, I'm not sure....when I go back and read it, we'll figure that part out.

Well, my FMC tried to give herself a promotion from green belt to brown belt in karate. I didn't notice until I pasted a bit of my story to a friend. I changed it to green and told her if she behaved I might let her test up to brown later in the story. =P

i've had my two female leads run away with me. granted SOME of it was planned, but not nearly any of what was happening.

they weren't supposed to find out their magical elements until 10 years later in story time! They're 8, their supposed to develop late and get them at 18! Very frustrating, however it has turned out that they're not actually getting their powers, just that their guardian animals decided to intorduce themselves about a decade early in story time.

*sighs* back to writing though, i'm on a roll with these character run away, and if it's good for word count, I don't care if they run away with the plot, it'll probably turn out better in the end that way anywas

"I reject your reality, and substitute my own." - Adam Savage, Mythbuster
"All that glitters is not gold, not all those who wander are lost." J.R.R Tolkein
-------------------
2008: A Dance of Magic § Won! 50,449
2009: Dancing Elements § 0

Mine are doing the same thing, but I am NOT happy about it. Somehow one character went from a frigid but snarky badass to a self-righteous goody two-shoes and another turned from a smart, savvy drug addict to a blithering, idiotic drug addict. I'm currently trying to get them both back on track before I end up hating them.

Mine always do. If they don't, I can't write. It makes up for some pretty amusing situations and surprises for me when I'm writing, but getting them out of it again is hard sometimes. I must say that characters writing themselves are the best ever when they do what you have in mind. But oh boy, if they don't...

hope is more than a postponed disappointment.

Don't ask how this is even possible, but my MC actually became distracted and started talking about how he can never stay focused on anything for very long. A whole paragraph. That's my brain subconsciously makes fun of me. XP

November's Fuel:
Bowls of ramen eaten: 3
Cans of energy drink drunk: 3
Cups of Coffee: 1 (Thanks, Stephanie. XD)

My heroine is strong, knows what's already happened to her and where she's going in the next scene. I can count on her. My problem is with the minor and incidental characters who seem to be UNwriting themselves, methinks. The heroine's date, for example, kept changing hair color in the first few pages, so I decided he should be bald from now on, because otherwise it's too confusing. Another minor character started out playing the drums in the live band on stage at the restaurant, but before the end of that scene, I looked over, the drum set was gone, and he was playing the piano AND the harmonica...yet the dance tune hadn't changed.

Do you think readers notice things like that?

I only ask because I don't want to cut or edit... As it is, my word count is already below my goal for Day 2.

... Oh, yeah... NOW I remember! No worries: The ARE no readers at NaNoWriMo!

PRAISE BE TO THE LITERARY GODS!

First Time NaNoWritMo Participant in 2009

Mine certainly seem to be doing this, although for two people in the afterlife, they seem to be spending inordinate amounts of time talking about coffee and donuts.

No doubt I'll be able to claim I was being cleverly postmodern and ironic in December.

Basically, yes. But I'm not sure if it's a good thing. My FMC is a lot less moody over my MMC than I originally planned, but some of my minor characters are just sort of fading into the background-they need to speak up.

A few are doing that. One of my minors I was using for a cold open has instead made himself into an important secondary character with a sharp, witty sense of humor (or so I tell myself). My pirates are showing too much discipline, in fact you'd think they were ex-navy until I started beating back this habit with a stick.

The Logician: A Mathematical Romance NaNo '09
Characters Introduced: 6
Characters Killed: 1
Math References: 1
Cups of Coffee: 3
Insanity Level: Low

My main characters have become friendly much more rapidly than I expected and a little bit unnaturally. I'm not very pleased about that so I'll have to make their progress with one another a one-step-forward-two-steps-back type of thing, she is, after all, an unrepentant human-eater and he is the type of guy she'd eat if he tried to hurt her; and he despises creatures like her and thinks that the fact that they go around in human bodies is repulsive so... definitely gotta make it less friendly.

And I also got a very easy loophole for how everything gets resolved very suddenly in a sentence that wrote itself and came along so naturally that I had to blink and step back for a second to just read over how THAT happened. It was a little bit ridiculous and more than surprising. I'm am progressing way too smoothly compared to my blank and uninspired beginning so I'm getting more nervous the easier it gets, lol.

I had a character I didn't even intend to write about at ALL jump in and become my MC's best friend, taking charge of showing her around and showing her the ropes. She's even saved the MC from excessive Mary-Sue-ness so far by being the one who noticed things and making great suggestions.

I had one of my old characters sneak into the story somehow. The only way I know this is how he carries himself, and his eyes. That's all that's remained the same about this guy, other than the "fought in past wars and lost my family" thing. He's a sad guy...

I had it all planned out that my main character wasn't going to find out that my main male character was her brother for a long time, she wasn't going to find out about the whole werewolf thing for a long time... and then not only did she find out right away, but she's being remarkably accepting of it.

I keep sitting there going "NORMAL PEOPLE WOULDN'T REACT THAT WAY" and she keeps blithely replying that I wrote her in such a way that she's clearly NOT quite normal, and that it makes perfect sense for her character to respond this way, thank you very much.

I've given up on fighting her on it. She wants to be crazy and angry but accepting of the weird, she can.

Repeated post, sorry.

I thought I knew my main characters so well when the story started off. Two chapters in, one has become bossier and more resourceful than I'd planned, and less mature, and the other has become both straight, and more of a doormat than I'd intended. This takes the story in an entirely different direction, as it looks like they're not going to end up getting along by the end of the plot. At all.

This should bother me, but I'm just excited because I'm not used to my characters doing their own thing like this. They're only semi-inflated, for the most part; these guys are much more round, even if I don't really like who they're turning out to be as much.

My FMC knows just where she is going and just what she is going to do next. The only problem is with this I don't always know where we are going and all off a sudden I have scenes being written I've never seen before. So, far this has worked out because I let the story flow the way she wants it. It's just easier to give her what she wants.

I've had some minor characters though that have pushed their way forward and want more page time. Some of them are really funny and seem to lighten the mood of such a dark story, which I like. I enjoy seeing how they interact with my FMC. Though some of them are annoying and I don't know what to do about them because trying to get them off doesn't work. I'll just write through it and see what happens.

2008: Blood on the Badge. 65,148/50,000
2009: City Bleeds Red. 62,763/50,000

Yeah, mine too... only they don't know where they're going. They just know that what I had in mind was just slightly incorrect.

Way to be frustrating, guys.

What am I doing still awake?

...Oh wait.

well, i got it all set up, and that pesky friend is finally in the hospital, but she's not dying nearly fast enough to suit me. This was supposed to be a bang you're dead and my poor MC is so distraught, but instead its oh im dying oh i feel so bad oh im going to chemo and i like shakespeare and maybe I should kiss that cute doctors and blah blah. I'm getting tired of it already. Shut up and die peacefully. If it makes you feel better, your death is integral to the story line.

Sli-mon-ey /slaɪ mən i/

1. a person of amazing skill or accomplishment
3. a person who is expert at trickery or deceit
4. a winner in any struggle or contest.
5. a word used in communications to represent the letter s.

I totally feel that way too. I write stuff down and then think "how the hell did I think up all this stuff, this isn't me at all". My protangonist has decided to turn the story into something heavily based on theology and I am not a religious person at all. My main character is a schizophrenic, and now while I have researched this topic and I have had someone close to me in my family who was schizophrenic, I showed what I have written so far to a friend of mine who is a psychologist and has commented on how accurately I have depicted someone who is schizophrenic. Most of the novel is written from his perspective, so when I write I feel like I am completely inside his mind and not my own. This disturbs me quite a bit.

Yup! My MC can't decide if she's a smart ass or an honorable samurai keeping to the warrior code. Sometimes she comes off as flat and sometimes, a complete imbecile. Virtuous one minute, murderous and impatient the next. She's confused.

What I'm probably the most proud of is that I have introduced a SCORE of people that are going to be major players in this novel and only three of them were even HALFWAY planned out. (Names and physical descriptions ONLY. Nothing else.) The rest I've made up on the spot and I'm pretty stoked about it.

2004 -

Well one of my main character's sidekicks is nothing like I had pictured her to be. I thought of her as clever but a bit distant towards people.

When I started writing her, I realised she simple doesn't give a damn. She only cares about the job and her brother and, to a lesser extent, food and Grey's Anatomy. When my injured main character is startled and falls off the couch and can't get up, she suggests the couch is more comfortable than the floor... but doesn't even think about getting up and helping him onto the couch, because Grey's Anatomy is on TV and she's enjoying ice cream.

I think she's hilarious.

2008: Monster (29k)
2009: Anywhere But Home

Yuuup.

I was a solid two days behind, and then my skypirate MC spilled his drink on a navy captain in a bar. Several thousand words later, he's still trying to talk his way out of being dragged off and summarily executed. And he's already started cooking up schemes. I couldn't be happier.

"When the hero develops this sort of arrogance, it always ends dreadfully. Look at Icarus. Fellow with the wings, have you read that one?"
"I think so."
"That is precisely where we find ourselves now."

Pretty much exactly what has happened with me.

I had everything - plot, characters, even the structure of some pieces of dialogue, planned out to a fine detail. By the 2nd everything had changed.

It began with two of my characters, twins, starting to get above themselves. They just flowed so well together; it made me wonder why, in my original plot, I had TWINS interacting with my MC almost always on their own and not together. My MC herself is gradually gaining a personality, I have a feeling with her I'm just going to run around and see what happened in December.

But the worst one was my villain. I introduced him early, on a whim, and he suddenly became awkward, shy, uncomfortable, instead of being this suave, handsome, slightly buffed guy. It's HIS fault, because now, to accommodate his personality change and the random incident I found myself writing for NO REASON WHATSOEVER to give more to do, a new idea came to me.

And it's so much better. And I'm probably going to switch perspectives to my old villain soon. Because it turns out New!Jonathan is a little bit more awesome than I intended.

Yes, exactly! My second lead female's personality has done a pretty major shift, which actually, considering how similar it was to FMC #1's is a really good thing. And then my MMC #2 is much more of a smug prick than I planned him to be and I actually like him better now, whereas I didn't like him before. Hurrah for scientific arrogance and city elitism!

The writing themselves bit is pretty cool on one hand, but a little scary on the other hand because it's jacking with my outline. But going over it, I've realized that the changes have made writing other scenes and actions that need to happen for plot purposes much easier. It's awesome!

Ambition--the journey of a thousand miles sometimes ends very badly.

Giant cups of Tea: Yeah, I've kinda lost count. It's around 20 though, I believe.
Stress level: Evaporated, I'm done baby!
Times my characters have done something they weren't supp

My boy Colin is crazy. He hasn't turned out the way I thought at all.
I thought he could be an average angst-ridden teenager, but no. He's just nuts. He has very vivid daydreams all the time and when left alone in his room he pretends he is a robot.
I love him though.

my MC seemed to have shredded her own character sketch. looks like i have myself an anti-hero.

."... Big men with big guns and big money. All equaled one big problem. ..."

This is one of my greatest joys of writing a novel, especially one where I have general ideas but no idea about the structure. The characters are pretty much writing themselves out. They're developed, three-dimensional, have flaws... especially my main character. I'm happy that my first female lead that I am writing in a story ever is fantastic to write. I had no idea who she was on Day 1 and I thought because of that, I would have no incentive or drive to keep writing. My WC proves me wrong, lol!

Day #1 of 30 Days, 30 Covers

I had a generic mentor, who I had only decided was female immediately before starting go from being a flat, 2 dimensional cutout, to a surprisingly deep and funny character in less that a thousand words. I am now tempted to promote her from SC to MC.

lmao!! HILARIOUS! I totally know what you mean, some characters are total primadonnas who can't get the fact that they're meant to be fringe characters.