Writing Tuesday: The Voices in My Head

Tuesdays will be my day of talking about writing and the writing life. Thus, I name them WRITING TUESDAY. This will be my day of the week to talk about whatever it is I feel like talking about regarding writing...be it my writing, or something I read about writing. Maybe I'll share some passages of WIPs. Who knows?

So, here's my first Writing Tuesday post!

Last night, this conversation happened between me and one of my best friends...

Me: My character is going to hate me.
Tracy: Huh?
Me: She's going to hate me. I'm killing off a ton of people.
Tracy: Okay...
Me: She's never going to talk to me again.
Tracy: You do realize your characters aren't real, right?

I've been told this about a thousand times by people who, well, aren't writers. Because writers realize that, on some level, the characters are real. We know that we can't always control what comes out of our characters mouths.

It's like we have voices in our heads.

I learn new things about my various characters all the time. Right now, I'm writing the first draft of the sequel of the novel I'm about to send out. And I've learned some interesting new things about my characters over the last manuscript and a half.

1. One girl doesn't deal with stress very well. And she's slightly bi-polar most of the time.
2. Another girl can never keep her opinions to herself. Ever. Even when they're arguing about life-or-death situations.
3. My protagonist can be an emotional wreck, but she can also be ridiculously intense and focused.
4. One of my protagonist's best friends...yeah...he actually has a heart. Awwwww.

These things? Yeah, I didn't know about them when I first created these characters. These are things I only ever found out because I let my characters control the story and say what they need to say.

I think this is one of the best things about being a writer--it's like no matter how old we get, we can still have our imaginary friends.