Lois & Clark Forums Forums General Discussion Fun with Polls How much of a God are you ?

MLT wrote in another thread:

This got me thinking. In school I read a novel and the author said that his characters are really deciding what is happening. He said that he has an idea and starts creating his characters. He wants them to do something and then suddenly they "act" completely different.

What's your opinion?

It's not about killing characters but making them do something? Do you always succeed? Or are they sometimes stubbornly insisting to act on their own?

I have to say that most times I can usually dictate what my characters do without too much effort.

Of course I usually don't put them in situations that would go contrary to their natures.

Here is a 'conversation' I had with a character in the fic I am currently working on.

See, you just have to know which buttons to push. Sometimes they supply me with better lines, but they almost always do what I say.

Its good to be the King!

James

Well, I pretty much experienced that my characters have their own mind. I wrote a story once, which had absolutely nothing to do with Lois and Clark. In this story I needed a supporting character who was only supposed to take the main character to a certain place. And when I made him walk into the scene, he suddenly decided that he didn't want to be a supporting character. Out of the blue, I had a whole new main character in my story.

I have to admit that this kind of character action is pretty useful when you are stuck and your characters decide to help you in that situation

I have a temperamental muse. If Babbles doesn't get what she wants, she pouts and sulks and won't give me anything.

So, I listen to my muse.

I think sometimes though, my muse listens to the characters instead of to what I want to do - because she has me go off into places I never meant to go... occasionally.

-- DJ

Interesting question. As the one who provoked this question, let me clarify

Although, I'm 'God' when writing a story, I don't control the characters' choices any more than God controls our choices. After all, there's always that little thing called 'freedom of choice.' [so I couldn't vote in your poll since both answers are true for me ]

In fact, in my current fic, I've actually been writing in my fights with the characters to try to get them to do what I want them to do. I will remove these fights once the fic is finished, but for the time being... Here is what these fights look like (keep in mind that I've removed comments that give away too much of the plot.):

ML (who isn't entirely certain she's not losing her mind )

For setting up the universe & situations, I'm pretty much in control -- subject to considerations of plausibility, etc. But once I get the ball rolling, the characters can start to get uppity Fifteen years ago I wrote a Blake's 7 fic and created a minor character - an underling - just so the bad gal would have someone to talk to & beat up on. I was quite surprised when he informed me that he'd had enough and was going to stage a coup d'etat. It worked out well for my storyline, though. Lois has done much the same to me, too. But in my experience, when I followed their lead I got a more interesting story out of it.

It's like real life, I think. God sets things up and arranges circumstances, but we all have free will, and so the story wanders from the original intention.

A major difference, of course, is that our fanfic worlds are all self-contained (mostly). If Yvonne cuts of Clark's leg or someone kills Lois, it's not going to affect my story. Real life is much messier.

PJ

My opinion is that we're ultimately all Gods. I thinking writing is just like any other art. Good art comes from good choices. Now do we always sit down and say, 'hey, this will be a great idea!' and proceed with it. Not always. But once you get into something, it's really easy to just dive in and go with the flow. Even though something may take off in a direction you didn't expect like...I don't know, monkeys suddenly kidnapping Clark's clothes, I think it's still your wild idea in the end, even if you weren't consciously planning it. <g>

JD

This sometimes happens to me. The plot seems to be chugging along nicely, then I'll write something that seems to be what I originally planned - then look at it again and think "Wait a minute, no way does _____ do THAT! She'd want to _____" And once that decision is made the characters are starting to get out of control, and the decisions are being made depending on who the characters are, rather than the needs of the plot. Usually this ends up as a much better story - for example, in one of my Buffyverse stories someone killed Angel for excellent reasons, and until I realised that she'd do it, and why, it was going to be a much weaker story.

Heh. I agree with Pam.

See ya,
Anna.

Since deathfics interest me so much, I want to emphasize that when a writer kills a fictional character, for example Lois, then the writer chooses to kill Lois. It is a conscious choice. The author could have written his or her story differently and allowed Lois to survive.

Similarly, a writer also chooses to, say, punish Lois and allow Clark to move on. That is also a conscious choice.

In real life these things just happen to us. In fiction they don't. It is the writer who pulls the strings of his or her fictional characters. The writer allows the characters to be happy or sentences them to unhappiness or death.

Ann

A little bit of both, really. I think Pam sums it up for me best. I'm in overall control of where I'm headed, but I've often been heard to say that when I start a story it's a little like letting my characters out of the trap, watching them race ahead down a blind alley and running frantically after them to keep up.

I've lost count of the times my story has been completely derailed in mid-scene by my characters suddenly setting off on a tangent in the dialogue.

Half my writing time is usually spent trying to get a conversation back on the track I started out on, while keeping the tangent. (I usually end up liking the tangent. <g> Even if it does mess up and/or totally contradict the dialogue already in place). But, oh it's a good feeling when I succeed and manage to keep both.

On a similar note, has anyone else found that when inventing original characters you sometimes find that you come up with a name for them and 'they' don't like it? And you can't get to grips with that character until you name them something else? At which point, you realise that was their true name after all? Or...is that just me? I remember in Caped Fear, I had two partners working for a company and I just could not get a handle on either of them. Finally, I realised that they had each other's names and that was the problem. X was a Y and Y was an X and I had them entirely the wrong way round. Once I swapped them over, they both clicked right into place. Go figure.

Hey, hey, hey! Objection over here in the cage in the corner! Letting his labrat run his office doesn't make Bernie a wuss! It makes him an excellent judge of character and more intelligent than any human has a right to be and most humans are.



LabRat

Well, also I have total control over the situation I create for our favourite characters, they develop a mind of their own. There was a scene where I wanted Lois to fly off the handle when she hears something from Clark because that's quite funny to write - and to read, I hope. Especially if Clark tries in vain to calm her down. But it didn't work out. In the end, Clark was terribly anxious, and Lois was the one to calm him down.

Or in my WIP (Time for Two), in the last part, I really wanted Lois and Clark to end up in bed doing the stuff nfic is made of. First, I had that problem with Clark who insisted that he'd never take advantage of Lois like that, especially when this Lois was also drunk, and when I had finally worn him down, Lois decided that she'd not play along, but fall asleep instead. Much to the disappointment of my readers. Well, perhaps she'll be less tired another time. Hopefully.

The most important problem of mine is that I can't make my characters act quickly and purposefully. Something always comes up that makes their story longer and longer.

Amen, Labby . That sums it up exactly!

ML

LOL, Lab! That's a good way to put it.

Usually, I think of it like this:

I'm God, but my characters have free will.

(Not an option I could vote for this time, unfortunately.)

Which leaves me to dictate what happens around them, but leaves them to make their own choices of what to say and do (mostly).

I have tried pulling against that once. Characters were refusing to go the way I wanted them to. I had a clear plot. A logical (more or less, considering the author) sequence of major events that would bring us to the proper endning. But about halfway through the sequence, while filling in the details and the minor events, the characters insisted on going in a completely different direction. I put my divine foot down and insisted that they do things my way.

It didn't turn out so good. They went along, because they had no choice, but they acted like they were being forced to do it (which they were). The story lost its charm, ended up making no sense, and was left a broken mess.

I tried to go back and do it their way, but they were sick of the whole thing by then and refused to cooperate.

So... I learned my lesson. They do what they want now (within reasonably broad limits), and if I want them to do something else, I make something happen around them to give them reason to change their minds. If Lois doesn't want to go back to her desk, I can always make a Double Fudge Crunch Bar miraculously appear there... (Or something like that.)

Paul

My characters most definitely have a mind of their own - I have a lot of trouble controlling them sometimes... Actually, I think even my fingers have a mind of their own, cause the stuff I type doesn't always come from my brain, I'm real sure!

*lol*

I'm glad I'm not the only one this happens to!

Hm. I'd have to say something in between, but I probably wouldn't take the credit (or blame) for anything my characters do. I see a peak of some plot point that I like the idea of somewhere in the distance and start hiking towards it. However, I often find bumps and such that make me turn aside for a bit, and sometimes I just decide that it's not worth going to that mountain after all and head towards the plains instead.

When I write it's really not a conscious thing for me. I sit down, put my fingers on the keyboard, and suddenly I'm not at my desk anymore. I am watching the characters as they talk, act, laugh, cry. It's like watching a movie. So five hours later, around 3 o'clock in the morning or so, I'll come out of my daze, usually have to wipe tears from my eyes, and look down at what I wrote to make sure it represents what I saw and felt. Usually, that's all that happens before I let my little sister read it and I set it out to post, so each chapter is rather raw for me.

Sure, I have some of the ideas of what's going to happen, but it's like watching a preview to an upcoming movie. I have no idea how it's really going to turn out until it's already written and ready for its final edit.

So I don't really feel like I'm in control or out of control with my characters. They do what they *should* do--what they *would* do, if they really were in the circumstances that they find themselves in my fic. I think it was Ben Jonson who wrote about how writing should reflect human nature. I hope I can catch some of that in my writing.

Really, I think the only thing that's really me in the fic are some of the rare "smirky" moments. You can find them if you look carefully--they're the random humor amidst the darkness. The voice usually has a somewhat wry tone, and likes to tease you readers. So if you recognize it--Hi! That's me! <waves>

Anyway, I've got to go. Good night, all!

SmirkyRaven

Yep, I'm God insofar as I put my characters into a certain situation, but then they tend to dictate what happens next. Why, just last night, Clark took me completely by surprise - I thought he was despondent and not likely to say anything of much significance for the rest of the scene, and darn me if he didn't suddenly take complete control of the situation and basically direct what happened for the remainder of the scene.

He clearly doesn't believe I'm God.

Yvonne

We've all experienced those times in our stories where the characters seem to take off in a direction that we hadn't originally intended. And in that aspect we might feel that we've lost our 'godhood' and the characters are exhibiting their own 'freewill'.

But you have to keep in mind that these characters are reacting according to personality parameters that we have set up previously. My version of Lois, or my version of Clark will run off on some tangent because it fits into the character that I have established.

For example, Yvonne's Clark had done some things in her stories that I could never make 'my' Clark do because that's not how I see the character. It doesn't invalidate her version of Clark, nor mine. It merely points out that as 'god' of the story, the characters are constrained by our perception of who the character is and what they would do.

So, even though it often appears as if the characters will take off on their own once the story is going, they will stay within those personality traits which define who they are to you. If they stray outside those borders, then you have failed in your story. You do control the action of the story, but you can't force the characters to act outside the parameters of who you think they are just to 'make some plot point'. That's where you run into trouble.

Tank (who feels that, like all writing, fics are an organic thing; the best ones evolve as they are written)

It's not like I actually ENJOY killing off characters.

...most of the time.

I am in the belief that the characters tell me what to do, usually. Sure, I have a good deal of control overall, but when I write something that they don't like, they'll let me know by hogtying my muse and leaving a ransom note.

And sometimes, a story just demands to be written, and you can't get it out of your head until you do.

But the evillness is all me. Definatley.