Are Your Characters Talking?
By Anna Elliott | January 5, 2017 |
The title of this post isn’t actually a rhetorical question. I’d love to hear what other writers have to say to the question: do your characters talk to you while you’re writing their story? Because I know that answers vary. I know authors– wildly successful authors– who will give you a funny look and an, Uh, no, because they’re . . . fictional? response if you ask whether they hear their characters’ voices. I know other authors– also wildly successful– who swear that they’ve had entire books thrown into disarray by a particularly “noisy” character who refuses to cooperate with the planned story. I’ve also read books and articles on craft– some of them here on WU– that are fairly dismissive of the idea that a fictional character can, or should, influence the direction of a story. Writers, these articles suggest, should take responsibility for their own plots, be the captains of their own ship– and I’m not sure that I necessarily disagree.
But I do tend to hear my character’s voices. Now, I don’t think either answer to my question makes you more or less of a writer or better or worse as a storyteller. Every author is different, and everyone has to find the writing process that works for them. But I have had characters entirely hijack my plot before. Villains who insisted that they were going to reveal themselves as heroes in the end. Romantic pairings that I never planned for, because one character simply pointed to another inside my head and said, “I want that one.”
I also know that it’s the kiss of death to a work-in-progress when my characters stop talking to me and go radio silent. It’s happened a few times, and every time, I’ve had to set the work aside and write something else until they– thankfully– started talking again. So what do you do if your characters have suddenly gone quiet on you? Or if you haven’t had characters who feel like they’re talking inside your head, but want to see whether you can encourage yours to start speaking up. Here are a few strategies that I’ve found are helpful when I need to “hear” what my characters have to say:
Dialogue. Probably the most obvious strategy for getting your characters to talk is to give them something to say. Makes sense, right? Sometimes if I’m stuck on where a scene is really going, or what the emotional heart of a chapter needs to be, I’ll start with dialogue and ask myself, “What does this character MOST want to say out loud, in this moment? If someone asked them to voice exactly what they’re thinking, what would it sound like?” Now, your character may not actually say what they’re thinking out loud in the final draft of your story. But still, knowing what they want to say always helps me to channel that emotional truth into the story.
Backstory. This one is huge for me. I usually don’t fully connect with a character until I know the details of where they came from and what made them who they are at the moment my story begins. What was their family life like growing up? What were their childhood hopes and fears? What were the best and worst things to every happen to them? Of course, not all of those details can possibly make it into your story, but I always find that imagining the life my characters led before I and the readers met them makes them come to life in my mind in a way that nothing else can.
Journal. I also really like this one. If a scene just isn’t coming alive for me, I like to try to imagine how it would read if one of my characters was writing it down as a diary or journal entry– or maybe as a letter to someone they love. I don’t necessarily write that journal version down, but just imagining it is often enough to get my character talking again.
Abandon Ship. I’m mentioning this one last, but I do think it’s important. Sometimes my point of view character is flatly refusing to talk to me when it comes to narrating a scene– and it turns out that that’s okay, because that particular character wasn’t supposed to, an entirely different character was. I’ve been stuck on impossible scenes or chapters that suddenly worked when I flipped the point of view to another character’s. Sometimes your characters may not be talking because they’re trying to let someone else speak up for awhile.
On the plotter/pantser scale of writing, I fall much more towards the plotter end. I love outlines, I typically jot down an ordered bullet list of key points in a scene before I write it, and I never start a book without knowing– or at least thinking that I know– how it’s going to end. But I also have to say that I live for those unplanned moments, the moments when my characters seem to take on a life of their own and throw all my careful plotting out the window. Whether or not you hear your characters voices, I think most authors would agree that there’s an element of magic to crafting a story. Call it the muse, call it the manifestations of the writer’s subconscious, there are moments in writing that take your breath away because they come to even you, the author, as such a revelation. Those moments when I can hear my characters’ voices are my favorite of all.
Do your characters talk to you? What do you do when they go stubbornly silent?
Anna Elliott is an author of historical fiction and fantasy. Her first series, the Twilight of Avalon trilogy, is a retelling of the Trystan and Isolde legend. She wrote her second series, the Pride and Prejudice Chronicles, chiefly to satisfy her own curiosity about what might have happened to Elizabeth Bennet, Mr. Darcy, and all the other wonderful cast of characters after the official end of Jane Austen’s classic work. She enjoys stories about strong women, and loves exploring the multitude of ways women can find their unique strengths. Anna lives in the Washington DC area with her husband and three children.
No, my characters don’t talk to me, but I “hear” them. I will “hear”/”see” scenes in my head while doing things like the dishes, driving, etc. so that, when I sit down to write, the pump is primed. When the scenes stop playing and I get stuck, that’s when I try outlining to figure out “what’s next.”
pretty much what I was going to say! with the added note that I’ve decided my first and best “advice” to new writers is to have a second or third other creative outlet; sometimes it’s in NOT writing that key scenes or issues or answers come to me. I was going for a walk yesterday and a critical scene (in my next book in series by the way) came to me – as I spoke each line, the next one came naturally
So totally agree about other creative outlets! I love crochet and sewing for helping me get the writing flowing again.
I make quilts when I’m not writing. And I usually don’t use a pattern, so it’s like putting together a puzzle without a picture. I’ve told my writers group it’s like plotting a novel. I plan it in my head, cut the pieces and lay them out on the floor. Then I rearrange things until the design is just what I want. And sometimes I have to add a different color to make it all cohesive. It’s pretty cool.
Yep, I definitely “see” scenes in my head while doing dishes, too. Thank goodness for boring chores, right? ;-)
Hey, Anna,
I usually start my work with developed backstories for each of my main players, as well as how the story will begin, end, and the plot and pinch points along the way.
And although I’ve had dialogue strike me at the oddest times (a 2:00 a.m. jolt out of bed to write a poignant scene), it usually develops naturally within the story.
However, it always has to remain true to character. Would that particular character notice that “thing” — whatever that “thing” may be — and if so, how would they verbalize it? And that’s when the voices — the characters — speak to me. Some will say, “I wouldn’t give it a second thought,” while others exclaim, “Oh, SHINY!”
I think the best way for your characters to speak to you is to really know your characters, inside and out, and follow their lead. Thanks for helping us get to know and listen to them better.
Yeah, what is it with those 2 am revelations, right? I’ve had many interrupt a perfectly good night’s sleep. :) I completely agree, knowing our characters inside and out is definitely the key.
It’s my greatest struggle: to let characters be fully independent, not just a reflection of myself.
Lately I’ve hit upon a helpful technique. Instead of dialoguing with my characters, interviewing them, writing their backstory or similar getting-to-know-you methods, I’ve asked characters in the story to tell me about each other.
Each has a different perspective, sees things I and others don’t. I ask a secondary character, for example, what do you think that the protagonist is going to do or say right now? The answers are sometimes more interesting than what I might have come up with on my own.
Or, wait…oh, never mind the chicken-or-egg puzzle. The point is to get out of my head and into theirs.
What a great idea! It really can be fascinating to see how differently our characters view each other than we view them.
My characters talk to me all the time. I have occasionally talked back, but usually I just listen to what they have to say. When they go quiet I start to worry. I took Topamax for migraines a while back, but it made everything go quiet. I couldn’t write because my brain was fogged, and the funny thing was I didn’t even realize it until I couldn’t figure out why my car wouldn’t move – it was still in park and I had a difficult time remembering how it worked.
That “car stuck in parking gear” image is the perfect metaphor for writerly “stucked-ness”!
Oh goodness, I hope you’re feeling better now! I agree, the car in park image does work well as a metaphor. :)
I’m afraid I’m a bit of a pragmatist and I’m of the mind “Uh, no, because they’re —fictional?” I wrote a blog post not long ago about how I don’t believe in the muse, which I suppose is of the same family. Maybe it’s my science background, or my lack of belief in angels, spirits and poltergeists, but here’s my take: Sometimes we may feel as if an outside force or voice is prodding us along, filling in the story, but it’s just the creative part of our brains kicking into high gear. And I believe we should take full credit when we listen to it and nurture it, not attribute it to some outside, unseen force.
There really is no wrong way, as long as you’re writing and loving it. :-)
Hi Anna,
This is an interesting topic. My characters don’t speak to me, but I know them so well before I begin their stories that I sort of slip into them as people as I write. I think it’s somewhat similar to what character actors do when they take on new roles. They create each character as unique individuals as opposed to the movie star who simply seems to play the same role no matter what movie he/she is in. Through this method, my characters become living, breathing individuals to me as I slip in and out of their personas while writing. Though it may sound a little like a mental disorder (think multiple personalities – LOL), I find it best feeds my creativity.
I think most writers have a touch of that same mental disorder. ;-) That’s a good way of describing the creative process of uncovering a character’s voice!
I’ve long relied on snippets that unlock the flow. These snippets typically come to me on my evening walk. I jot them down when I get home, and they are the kindling for the next day’s writing fires. And they’re almost always in the form of dialog. It’s always a character key to the upcoming scene, and they often give me the critical component to it.
So yep, they talk to me. And I’m grateful. Thanks for letting those of us who listen know we’re not alone, Anna!
I’m the same, Vaughn, my scenes– definitely the most vivid ones– are born in my head when I hear a snippit of dialogue.
LOL, Anna, no wonder some people think I’m crazy because my story people do talk to me. Sometimes they talk to other people (also in my head) and I’m just eavesdropping. This is usually at the beginning of a story. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever started a story without a character insisting that I listen.
I think it’s interesting that once I begin plotting and writing, they quiet down, unless I get stuck, and then the come out to complain, but I also find where the story should go. Being stuck often means I’ve plotted myself into a corner, the character wouldn’t really do those things.
I have a LOT of unfinished stories. What’s funny is that when I get busy with other projects and abandon my characters, they’ll harass me. So I give in, even if I’m deadline for something else. The story people that stay with me year after year are the ones I pay attention to and I do eventually finish their stories.
Yes, to anyone who wasn’t a writer, we’d all sound crazy, right? :-) I definitely agree, the characters who stay noisy inside my head are the ones whose stories I MUST tell.
Hi there, Anna — thanks for this post!
I lean towards pantserism rather than plotterism and so, yeah, I always delight in surprise first — and bring in the rational/intellectual analyzer afterwards. Over time, I’ve gradually learned that I can encourage the surprises by (ironically) subjecting my writing to absolute routine: always, always write at the same time of day — whatever works — and never stare at the screen for more than a couple-three minutes. Keep the keyboard lively. And if I do that long enough, for enough succeeding days or weeks, it’s almost as if I’ve trained myself to create surprise.
Twenty-some years ago I attended a weekend writing workshop run by SF author David Gerrold. He preached the routine, too, but he also brought in an unexpected and very, well, spooky exercise: he turned out the lights and walked us through an opportunity to mentally interview our protagonist. The results really rattled me: I was writing short stories then, which featured a recurring main character; when I suddenly found myself “face to face” with him, it surprised the hell out of me. And when I “heard” him ask me, in deadly earnest, “Why don’t you ever let me DO something?!?”… well, I just about jumped out of my skin. But by the gods, did that exercise help me!
A gimmick I’ve used sometimes if I do find myself momentarily stuck: I start a new paragraph or section or chapter, even if I have no intention of using it, in which a principal character completely loses his or her composure: give the person a hissy fit or a crying jag, or bring him/her to tears with laughter. And do it in first person (again, even if that’s at odds with the surrounding paragraphs, chapters, whatever). It’s weird, but the extreme emotion seems to jar loose the words which have been stuck in my fingers.
Thanks again to you for the post, and also to the previous commenters who gave me good stuff to think about!
What a great story and what a great technique to try! I’ll have to experiment with that myself sometime. I agree, extreme emotions are definitely great for getting the words flowing again.
Hi Anna,
Thanks for the great post. Yes, my characters talk to me — and not just the characters in my novels. When I write short stories, my characters talk to me. In fact, that’s when I know I need to write — when a character enters my head and says “write this down before it’s too late, I have a story to tell.” In my first novel, a brand new character, one I hadn’t anticipated in the outline, synopsis, character descriptions, or bullet points, suddenly appeared and became a critical player. He’s fun to write and offers needed comic relief. Where did he come from? I don’t know. Subconscious? Maybe. I don’t believe in a muse. I DO believe in leaving oneself open to possibilities. And that means listening inside your head. Does it sound touchy-feeling? Esoteric? Mumbo-jumbo? Absolutely. I plan, I research, I prepare and then, to borrow from Ray Bradbury, I jump off the cliff and build my wings on the way down. And while I’m heading for the desert floor like Wiley Coyote, my characters talk to me.
I’ve never had the experience of characters going radio-silent so in the event that happens, I’ll keep your advice handy. Thanks again.
“And while I’m heading for the desert floor like Wiley Coyote, my characters talk to me.”
I love that so much, what a great image!
ohmygosh, Lorraine – that happened to me, too! The unplanned character showing up. I was writing away with my witch riding through the woods when she heard a whistle. I stopped writing and said out loud, “Who just whistled?” And I had to figure out who and why and how he fit in the story. It was the best thing ever for my witch’s character development. It made her come to life! I’m so thankful for that.
After 3+ years deeply entrenched in my small town of colorful characters, writing two books, the answer is YES. They have cried out in my sleep which is why I keep a pen and pad bedside. As long as they speak to me, their next story is already taking shape too.
Exactly! Gotta keep writing as long as they keep talking, right? :)
This happened to me on a recent project. I’ve had a certain character in my head for years and suddenly I lost her voice because I’d been immersed in another character. So I usually shift gears by asking questions, particularly about the character’s conflict. Then I let them respond. I’m very visual, so this plays out like a movie in my head. After I live the action in my head for a bit, it starts to transfer through my fingers and onto the page. Great topic!
That’s very interesting. So do you “see” your characters more so than hearing them? I’m more auditory than visual, which is maybe why I hear their voices myself.
Fun to read this. My characters sort of talk to me, but it’s more like I see the story unfolding, like a movie, as my characters do their thing and talk with one another. Sometimes I can’t keep up.
With my recent novel, I was shocked as I wrote a scene. The male lead approached the female, and she was thrilled to see him. And he just stared. I was sort of in his head as he stared at her, and he wouldn’t say a thing. I carried on—the female sensed a problem. Why was he so quiet? And then I couldn’t figure out what to do. It was a shut down.
So I took a few days off and let him work it out in my head. I made an effort to keep him in mind as I went about other tasks. Turns out, he wanted to break up with her, or he had second thoughts/worries. And that became a secondary conflict as they worked out, together, the main problem with the antagonist. And it revealed a lot about him and her and what the problem was on his side as they had big arguments! So I was glad he stopped until I figured it out.
It’s almost like the characters are real people in my head, but I figure it’s like some part of myself, maybe like imaginary friends for a small child. Pretty crazy, but I go with the flow.
Sounds like your character going silent led to a lot of great emotion and poignant conflict to add to your story- love when it works out like that.
My characters dictate entire chapters to me. It is their “story,” and they seem to know where they think it should go. We do argue a bit, and sometimes I reshape those stories based on all I’ve learned about storytelling over the years. But the initial excitement and the most important scenes, etc., come directly from those chatty, pushy characters who will not rest until I listen and “obey.”
Aren’t those chatty, pushy characters the best? ;-)
I usually am able to hear the main character.
I remember the first time a character went silent. My author voice drowned them out. The solution was to take myself in hand and realize that it was her story, not mine. And my job was to listen.
Yes, listening is so key, isn’t it?
I had a similar situation with my main character in my story that’s under consideration by a publishing house right now. I didn’t know her, so her character was flat and uninteresting … unlike the antagonist, who was very much alive and vibrant. She totally eclipsed my heroine. It look a LONG time to figure out I was flinching when it came to writing the heroine. She wanted to do things *I* would never do! And I worried what my friends/family would think if I wrote them. But my mentor encouraged me to go ahead and write what needed to be written – and wow – she came to life! And I like her! So while she wasn’t exactly silent, she refused to play my game. And I’m glad she didn’t.
Yes, my characters do talk to me! I’m revising my first novel, and about a year ago I woke up in the middle of the night and couldn’t get back to sleep because my characters were insisting on a violently confrontational scene that kept playing over and over in my mind until I thought it through. However, another character vetoed the scene, and I ended up not using it, but I did write it as an outtake. More recently, two of my characters hinted, again around 3:00 a.m. one morning, that they had perhaps secretly eloped before their official wedding day. I haven’t yet decided if I’m using it, but I did write it pretty much as they played it out for me in my mind. I hope they never stop surprising me. It’s worth the few hours of lost sleep.
Thanks for the post. It’s always helpful to know what other authors experience.
What is it about 3 am? That’s exactly when my characters usually get noisy, too! I do love it when that happens, though, and it’s just as you describe, the scene keeps playing in my mind until I work it all out.
I began smiling as I read your post and some of the comments. Obviously it’s different for every writer but yes, my characters talk to me and at times have unplanned emotional responses to situations I place them in.
For example, when I began my current WIP my MC’s background was set in my mind. I had a good handle on who she was and what shaped her up to the time my story began. About three paragraphs in she suddenly had a violent fear response to something in her environment. Not so oddly, I realized it was similar to a traumatic experience I’d had as a child, something long forgotten.
Her strong response had me asking the question – I know why I felt this way but why do you? My childhood response was pretty normal given the situation but that reason certainly wouldn’t carry any real weight in my story. So back I went to my MC’s childhood to weave in grounds for some misinformation about herself (sorry girl), and also for coloring the rest of her life. As a bonus I felt much closer to her and better able to tell her story.
What a wonderful example! It sounds like your character and story were so much richer because you were able to listen to what she had to say.
My characters talk, although not to me. They talk to each other. They talk to themselves. Sometimes in that semi-lucid dream-state, I see scenes from their lives. The heart-break suffered when younger, the betrayal of a sibling… Not germane to the story I’m telling, but there. Someday, maybe those other stories will get told, or not.
Even if those stories never actually make it into the final draft, just knowing them enriches your writing so much– at least, that’s always the case for me!
What a great post! I love it when the characters take over. My best writing happens when my characters start doing and saying things on their own and I’m just recording the scene as it unfolds. Doesn’t happen very often but when it does it’s gold.
I can hear the plotters scoffing but this isn’t as crazy as it sounds. For me the trick is to do both: write my scene outline and then ask each character what they want from that scene. Helps me dig deeper in character development–and that’s always good, right?
Yes, that’s definitely a good thing, and such a good strategy to use for scene writing– love it!
I love reading the different responses. They prove we may all be peas in the same writer pod but definitely individuals.
My characters don’t talk to me directly. I have had the experience of waking up and hearing my characters talking…to each other, not to me. It’s as if I’m eavesdropping and it will send me scrambling for paper and pen to jot down enough to remember until I get to my computer. It always seems to happen when I go to bed thinking about a scene I need to work on the next day. And when I am writing, I am very visual. The scenes play out in my head like I’m watching a movie. And I love the days when I have to write as fast as possible to keep up with what’s happening and what’s being said. Love that writer magic.
Those ‘writing as fast as possible to keep’ up moments are truly the best! Love what you say about ‘eavesdropping’ too.
Hey, Anna (which spell check wanted to change to Why, Anna):
First, a couple stories.
I have been on panels with authors who have said something along the lines of, “The novel didn’t take off until the characters started talking to me.” Having read some of said authors’ work, I have had to bite my tongue on occasion to keep from saying, “What a shame they only spoke to you in cliches.”
The playwright Martin McDonough, one of my heroes, said that as he wrote in his flat the characters often spoke so rapidly, energetically, and voluminously, he had to tell them, “Wait, wait, shut up for a sec, I have to get it down!”
When I seem to lose a handle on a character’s voice, I have them address their biggest problem in the book, either as if writing in their journal or confiding to their closest confidante. Take them out of their comfort zone and make them tell you what’s going on.
Sometimes they’re still stubborn. If so, I put someone else in the scene who won’t take silence for an answer.
Wonderful post. Happy New Year!
Errr – no, my characters never talk to me. I am not part of their world. Though when they talk about “going to meet their maker”, do they mean me????
I “see” scenes, like a film, as I’m inventing them. So I have to understand the layout of the “set” – I have to design the buildings and interior decor, draw maps etc before I can get anywhere.
However, I do find my characters don’t follow direction very well – recently I’ve tried to write scenes with dialogue in which the conversation takes a totally unexpected twist and doesn’t end up where I intended it to go. There’s a long argument that I’m currently stuck on because it keeps going in ways I don’t mean it to.. “Herding cats” comes to mind. Serve me right for inventing strong-willed characters, I suppose.
Like many other posters, I often see and hear my characters as if in a movie, but the imaginary 4th wall remains intact.
Other times, the scene and the dialog comes first and I visualize them in retrospect.
Either way, I find that I do see and hear what is going on in my story.
My characters NEVER talk to me. They do have vivid conversations as though I’m not there. When I try to transcribe them, they change the subject. It’s really quite rude. Backstop usually feels like caffeinated hot chocolate in the back of my mind, some warm, welcoming and somewhat oppressive thought about how the world should be working. That usually happens at night. I’ve learned to keep something I can write with on hand.
I also am very visual, and also believe in my creative muse; however I’ve found taking Patricia Polacco’s advice of an old rocking chair to be a great place to start: a mindset to begin to listen. Thank you all for sharing! This is a wonderful conversation that I’d love to share with my middle school students. What do author’s think about? What works? How do we get the process moving forward?
Thanks for a great topic, Anna! One thing that helped me was not my characters talking to ME. It was a writing exercise my mentor had our group do. We had our hero and villain talk to EACH OTHER and I, as the author, was the mediator. We started off with the hero asking the villain something and we wrote in their voices. We only had 10 minutes and it was a slow start, but once I got going, it was pretty darn interesting. What came out of that was my villain was lonely. She had no friends and she wanted them, even though she denied it. It made her so real to me and put a delightful twist in her character arc. She’s still my favorite character. :)
When I feel like I’m transcribing characters’ conversations as I hear them, rather than just typing lines for them to recite, I know they’ve developed into fully three-dimensional characters. It’s a striking moment in the story process, both challenging and useful.
I remember trying to write a scene near the end of my debut novel in which the two characters involved, who had both attained strong voices by that point, stubbornly refused to talk. Jamming words in their mouths just didn’t sound right. I realized that their silence was telling me something: the scene was out of character for both of them. They didn’t care what my meticulous plot outline decreed. They’d evolved into people who wouldn’t behave in the way I was asking them to, and they consequently refused to play along.
For obsessive plotters like me, it can be tough to relinquish control to characters in this way (I imagine it’s a little like parenting a child who reaches adolescence and starts talking back–wonderful to watch them mature, harrowing when they disobey)! But ultimately the story is about the characters, not the author, and it’s their voices that should ring clear.
I couldn’t write if the story wasn’t telling me what to say. Hearing actual voices, no.
My characters usually come before my plot. They drive it and ultimately find their own way. I allow it because it’s their story after all. Yes, I hear them in my head all the time, and when I don’t pay much attention, they reiterate their needs when I’m asleep and actually wake me up. …LOL. And I agree with you about the characters’ history. I can really connect with them only if I know all the details of their backgrounds. I need to know them so well that they become real people to me.