Do you know more than you write?

[Harlequin]

When JK Rowling outed Dumbledore my first thought was that I would never do anything like that, because if a character of mine isn't gay on the page, then he isn't gay, period. I know very little about them that's not written down. I don't make up elaborate backstories. Usually I know a detail or two that's not explicitly in the text, but it's all vague and subject to change, and if it doesn't change it probably will end up in the text at some point. Just recently a character surprised me by having sex with another woman. I had no idea she was into that, but in hindsight it explains a lot about her.

How about you? Do you know more about your characters than your readers do? To expand on the subject, if there's something left vague, unanswered, implicit or mysterious in a story, do you always know the answer?

[ulfhjorr]

It's complicated for me. I try to know more about my characters than what ends up on the page. In fact, I find it very hard to write about them if I don't. However, once the work is done (or to the stage of done it will ever get to), I consider all that extra to be gone. That is, after the writing is over, I can't know more about the character than what is on the page, because that's all there is to know about the character.

[Harlequin]

That was in fact something I had meant to add. If I do know more than I write, that lasts until "The End" and no further.

[pepperlandgirl]

It depends how long I'm with a character. I co-wrote a very long series, and was with a particular character for 10 books. Sometimes, he surprised me. But by about book two or three, I knew a lot about his backstory, his life, his hopes, his dreams, his desires, and needs that never made it on the page, just because I was thinking about him so often. On my current project, my main character announced about 1/3 way through that he was a recovering drug addict. I had no idea.

[EddyTeddyFreddy]

In the other direction: In one story I was writing, a new character decided to erupt into the story and proceed to grab a major role in the entire narrative, and I had no [conscious] idea this individual even existed, let alone how central she'd become to a number of episodes, till she trotted into the scene I was writing and took charge of it.

[*] Who knows how long my subconscious had been brewing the character, eh?

[vison]

I know everything about my characters and always will.

Until I lose my mind, I guess.

[iampunha]

I'm so glad I'm not the only one who has reticent characters.

I'm even more glad that doesn't seem weird in this group.

I've always said that I'll know what's going to happen in my fiction when I see what I write. (With nonfiction, kind of a different situation.)

In the 1,000-word challenge thread, I was sure as hell that my character actually was old to redefine the word (excluding Bible characters). Now I can see other options.

In the other story I wrote, I didn't realize why Jeff acted as he did until I realized he's been living in his parents' basement for a year and Ted wanted someone else around who would mimic his plastic personality.

I'm writing the second part of Trapped right now, and I'm right to the point where someone's going to stumble into the lead character in a frosty cornfield in Rhode Island in December, and I think it's going to be a rape victim, but beyond that, I'm going to find out only slightly before cmyk finds out (the other person I PMed hasn't responded as of about an hour ago).

[LurkMeister]

I've written stories in the past where I started out with some characters, a setting, and a situation and no idea what story I was going to tell. Some of them got quite interesting.

Somewhere in a box I haven't unpacked yet I have notes for a series of stories I never got around to writing. Part of it is a detailed background for a number of characters, along with their culture (it's a future SF story with several different aliens) and possible story ideas.

[Zuul]

It's a combination of knowing more than I write and sometimes being surprised by my characters. Every character has a ridiculously detailed backstory, far more than I could ever get into on the page, but I don't know all of it. It filters in as I'm writing. To me, my characters are almost like separate people that I'm discovering with every word I type. It's like finding the sculpture inside the marble, and then knowing that there's even more to the sculpture than can be seen.

[tirial]

Yes - and like the others had said sometimes more than I know. Partway through a scene towards the end of a novel I had a character slap another with the label of PTSD. Went back to revise things to fit and found I'd already written his behaviour exactly to fit that label. It was news to me.

I tend to keep the backstory around though - if you are going to spin off a short story or sequel it's useful to have it, like extra sequences that weren't used in the original it saves some work.

[maggenpye]

I know more than the readers, the characters know more than me. Which seems to fit with what a few others have said here.

The main sticking point I'm having with the final part of a trilogy is that the characters keep insisting that they 'wouldn't do that'. So the plot has to change, because the characters won't.

Bastards.

(iampunha - I replied, I'm waiting with bated breath!)

[iampunha]

The main sticking point I'm having with the final part of a trilogy is that the characters keep insisting that they 'wouldn't do that'. So the plot has to change, because the characters won't.

Why does the plot have to change? Why can't your characters just walk away from something? It's the ultimate in agency (i.e., putting your characters in a situation and seeing what they do) realism: Your characters aren't just going to do what you feel like having them do.

(iampunha - I replied, I'm waiting with bated breath!)

It's taking a bit longer than I thought (in time and words), but I hope to have it done before long. It combines my two greatest challenges: realistic dialog (I have long felt I didn't make characters sufficiently different in dialect and sentence construction) and stubborn characters. The one does whatever she wants, and the other does whatever she wants. I've long since given up trying to map it out; lines come depending in some cases on the last word the other person said, and no sentence thus far in this exchange has gone halfway to where I thought it would go.

[maggenpye]

The plot has to change because they don't walk away from it, they just stand there looking at me, head cocked, eyebrow raised. If I persist, they'll fold their arms and say 'really?' in that way they have.

The first two books had moments like this and when I found the way through, they became the defining (and best) parts of the story - this one, the whole damn book is this moment.

It's been through two complete scrappings and rewrites, the FMC can't decide if she's having that miscarriage or not - the 2FMC has refused to even see her family, even though she insists they're not that bad, just unimportant. My MMC keeps hinting that his father would be a better person to talk to and the 2MMC may yet take over the whole damned thing, even though his story has the shortest arc - and his Aunt may be sick, injured, dead or merely away visiting - she won't tell me.

And having said all that, of course the 2FMC's family is unimportant, for some people that's absolutely true and it would fit very much with her character.

[iampunha]

The plot has to change because they don't walk away from it, they just stand there looking at me, head cocked, eyebrow raised. If I persist, they'll fold their arms and say 'really?' in that way they have.

I know the feeling. I was trying (just to have something less depressing to write) to get two characters in Trapped to have sex, and one of them couldn't be less interested in touching anything right now, and the other just wants to fuck with people's heads, not their bodies.

I'll be very happy when my recent "Life is shitty" writing kick whimpers out and I get more fun ideas.

[phouka]

Both yes and no.

I do a lot of research on the fly, especially via Wikipedia. What year was aluminum discovered? What's the name of an obscure piece of music written by a contemporary of Mozart? What are the three narcotic chemicals found in opium poppies? So, I look it up, I read it, I throw it in my writing, and when I read it some months later, I get all impressed with myself. I knew that? That's so cool!

With characters, I tend to know a great deal more than makes it into the books I've written, and that's saying something, because my books are hella long. A lot of times, this is because I automatically come up with the backstory on a character, but there's no need or way to shoehorn it into the story. Sometimes, its because it's going to come up in a future story, which may or may not ever get written.

For instance, I know why Ruth changed her major from pre-Med to English and never went to med school. I know that Michael's younger sister was a substance abuser. I know that Susan's son saved her life by chopping off her left arm with an ax. I know that Kate's first husband died of heart disease. Rachel was sexually abused by her father, ran away at the age of sixteen, and contracted HIV either from IV drug use or work as a prostitute. After her death, her brother Eli was plotting the death of their parents out of revenge. Whether or not that ever shows up in my writing, I don't know.

As for the minor characters who walk in and take over a large part of the scenery? Oy vey, do I know them. I call them spear carriers. David, Choob, and Kate were all spear carriers intended to say a few lines and go their merry way. Instead, they pulled up chairs, tooks a seat and got busy telling me what was what. Choob went from spear carrier to major character to the antagonist in the fourth (unwritten) book.

Some days, I'm surprised my head doesn't explode.

[maggenpye]

The plot has to change because they don't walk away from it, they just stand there looking at me, head cocked, eyebrow raised. If I persist, they'll fold their arms and say 'really?' in that way they have.

I know the feeling. I was trying (just to have something less depressing to write) to get two characters in Trapped to have sex, and one of them couldn't be less interested in touching anything right now, and the other just wants to fuck with people's heads, not their bodies.

I'll be very happy when my recent "Life is shitty" writing kick whimpers out and I get more fun ideas.

Having read the second part of trapped, I can imagine what it was like trying to get them into bed - best laugh I've had all day!

Phouka, snap on the flyby research - I find I have to keep Wikipedia and several quote sites open while I'm working. And the dictionary, thesaurus and complete works of Shakespeare. I've started collecting old books like "The World of the Children. Vols 1-4" from 1948 and "The Girl's Companion" 1956 edition, they're great for weird bits of trivia that help set time and place.

[PapSett]

I definitely know more about my characters than ever makes it into writing. Many years ago, I read an excellent book on how to make your characters believable-got it from the library, and cannot find it anywhere now, unfortunately. One of the suggestions I took away from it was to keep a notebook with pages for each of the characters, making notes on them, anything that pops into your head. It suggersted on the first page to answer a set of questions that it outlined.

One of the questions I distinctly remember was 'does this character have any scars and how did they get them?' The story I was working on at that time, I was doing the notebook notes for the male lead, and I had NO idea why, but wrote down 'large scar on left knee, from a rock climbing accident when he was a teenager.'

Later in the story, he was in a position where he had to climb a cliff to safety; his rock climbing history (that I had been unaware he even had!) probably saved his neck!

[iampunha]

Having read the second part of trapped, I can imagine what it was like trying to get them into bed - best laugh I've had all day!

:mrgreen:

I haven't given up yet, but in the next part (which I've already started stupidly laying out in my head), I don't think that younger female character -- I swear I'm going to get it straight in my head that the older one is female -- is really going to give a shit what I try to get her to do.

And for good reason. She knows I won't put her through things for only my intellectual curiosity. I do that, she kills herself, and I promised her I wouldn't yet.

(Has anyone stopped to consider how absolutely and thoroughly insane our character protection and knowledge issues make us look?)

[phouka]

I guess it's my geeky childhood, but I've often thought that D&D character sheets were an excellent way to delineate a character you were getting to know. You can figure out their stats, their alignment, their class (level 2 support tech!), their religion, and a plethora of other information.

I've never actually done it, but I've often thought of my characters in those terms. "Hmmm, he's got a really high intelligence score, but abysmal wisdom, and his constitution's for shit."

[iampunha]

I've never actually done it, but I've often thought of my characters in those terms. "Hmmm, he's got a really high intelligence score, but abysmal wisdom, and his constitution's for shit."

Oh, if only this were Capitol Hill or Thunderdome, I'd have a hell of a comeback ...

[Skald the Rhymer]

Yes. In the story I'm currently working on, a major character is gay; there's simply no place for it to come up in the story, though it may in a sequel.

[maggenpye]

Yes. In the story I'm currently working on, a major character is gay; there's simply no place for it to come up in the story, though it may in a sequel.

Hah, all you've told us about yourself is a fiction, you're JK Rowling and the character is Dumbledore!

[Baldwin]

I know everything there is to know about my characters. That's because I make them up. But I usually don't put in big chunks of backstory; just nuggets here and there.

[pepperlandgirl]

I definitely know more about my characters than ever makes it into writing. Many years ago, I read an excellent book on how to make your characters believable-got it from the library, and cannot find it anywhere now, unfortunately. One of the suggestions I took away from it was to keep a notebook with pages for each of the characters, making notes on them, anything that pops into your head. It suggersted on the first page to answer a set of questions that it outlined.

I'm going through this process right now. I don't go through it for all my books. Or even most of them, because often, I'd rather not know until the character "tells" me while I'm working--and I don't care how insane that sounds! But we're going to tackle quite a large project soon, and we're going to need to write it very quickly, so I want to have the dude's backstory all hashed out before we even start chapter 1. It's been an interesting experience. I learned he got his first gig when he was thirteen, working in a porno theater in New York. Things didn't really get better from there.

[Skald the Rhymer]

Yes. In the story I'm currently working on, a major character is gay; there's simply no place for it to come up in the story, though it may in a sequel.

Hah, all you've told us about yourself is a fiction, you're JK Rowling and the character is Dumbledore!

Close, but no cigar. I am actually Lucius Malfoy, and Rowling wrote her series based on interviews with me. The whole affair actually took place in the 80s, and...

well, never mind. I shouldn't reveal too much to Muggles.