{"id":231,"date":"2013-12-08T14:43:32","date_gmt":"2013-12-08T14:43:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/?p=231"},"modified":"2020-01-18T08:24:27","modified_gmt":"2020-01-18T13:24:27","slug":"our-characters-ourselves","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/our-characters-ourselves\/","title":{"rendered":"An Author’s Characters On the Loose?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve been doing readings from my fiction since the early 90s and one of the common questions I get afterwards is “Do your characters ever tell you what to do?” or “Do your characters ever get away from you?”<\/p>\n

That question is a fascinating doorway into how people tend to perceive authors and the writing process–and how they want to.<\/p>\n

My answer is plain: Never.\u00a0 And here’s what I mean.\u00a0 Everything that appears in my books, every aspect of plot, setting, dialogue, characterization, action is mine.\u00a0 Hell, the punctuation is mine, or as much mine as anything can be in this life of transience.\u00a0 I created it all, and even if I got advice from an editor or was inspired by other writers, the final form is mine.\u00a0 The words are mine,\u00a0 the rhythms are mine.\u00a0 It’s all shaped by me as a writer, as an artist, consciously and unconsciously.<\/p>\n

My characters are not independent of who I am.\u00a0 They don’t speak to me: I speak through them.<\/p>\n

\"tricking-the-reader\"<\/a>Saying a character surprised me is dramatic, but it’s not accurate.\u00a0 I surprised myself.\u00a0<\/em> Something was churning away inside, some unexpected connection got made that changed what I was working on.\u00a0 This happens constantly when we write: a mix of editing and revision and creation at the sentence level and the chapter level.<\/p>\n

But many writers love to grin and say, “Yes” in answer to the question above, tell dramatic stories that make audiences smile and even laugh.\u00a0 It seems to confirm something to non-writers about what it’s like to write; it makes the whole experience more romantic and glamorous than it actually is.<\/p>\n

Once I was nearing the end of a book and realized I had the wrong person committing murder.\u00a0 It wasn’t the murderer speaking to me, or the victim piping up, or even the gun giving advice.<\/p>\n

It was the mind of a writer spinning straw into gold. And after a long and fruitful career, I’m glad those moments keep coming.
\n<\/del><\/p>\n

Lev Raphael is the author of Writer’s Block is Bunk (Guide to the Writing Life)<\/em><\/a> and 24 other books in genres from memoir to mystery.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve been doing readings from my fiction since the early 90s and one of the common questions I get afterwards is “Do your characters ever tell you what to do?” or “Do your characters ever get away from you?” That question is a fascinating doorway into how people tend to perceive authors and the writing … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[292,788,95,421,198,321,464,790,789,324,290,214,380,495],"class_list":["post-231","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-authors","tag-book-tours","tag-characters","tag-creative-writing-2","tag-fan-questions","tag-fans","tag-fiction","tag-historical-fiction","tag-novesl","tag-plotting","tag-short-stories","tag-the-writers-life","tag-the-writing-life","tag-writers","tag-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=231"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5429,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231\/revisions\/5429"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=231"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=231"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=231"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}