z

Young Writers Society


Do your characters talk to you?



Do your characters talk to you?

Yes, I wish they'd shut up sometimes.
225
44%
No. I'm the writer; I make them talk.
94
18%
No, but I wish they did.
80
16%
Occasionally.
116
23%
 
Total votes : 515


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Thu Jul 28, 2011 8:42 pm
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WrittenInStone says...



Oh goodness, I feel really out of place when I say that they do because I actually talk back to them - like I'll seriously start a whole argument with them and then sometimes I'll lose and my friends or family will be all like ; Ok, you just lost an argument to yourself, three east here she comes.

I swear, most of the time I'm talking to them peacefully then they'll start some stupid little thing that annoys me and I'll write down something like -- "Anthony was smacked in the head" and they'll never shut up about it. I get in trouble with my characters all the time -- but I get them back as I write.
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Thu Jul 28, 2011 9:53 pm
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Twit says...



Lol, yes.
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Thu Jul 28, 2011 10:53 pm
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Rosendorn says...



If they're not talking to me I wonder whattheheck is going on and usually start talking to them to get the dialogue back.

Life gets interesting when your friend also has very talkative characters, so your characters get to be friends with theirs, and your conversations are frequently hijacked by characters making remarks, on both sides, usually with one character starting and ending with at least two talking, if not five or six...

I do the odd eavesdropping stint, too. Mostly when I'm actually writing the story or figuring out how the scene could go. If it's just everyday... yeah. Conversations.
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Fri Jul 29, 2011 1:22 am
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Nutty says...



I can't say I've ever had a character that talked to me, they tend to butt out of my everyday life. Often I don't even know how the characters will react until I put them into a situation- I have paragraph long bits and pieces around to attest to that, where I have tried to figure out what would happen if this character met such and such. Yet when I'm writing dialogue it's their personality, and it usually comes out fairly easily and I don't have to struggle. I guess I could say my characters only talk when I make them talk, but it's still them talking.

However when I was a child I remember narrating my own actions. The voice in my head was some imagined author describing what I was doing. Self-centred, yes, but who isn't at ten? xD
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Fri Jul 29, 2011 2:16 am
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Gladius says...



Are you kidding? I have this whole *nation* made for my charries to live in and interact with me! Sometimes they go off on their own in their own little corner of my mind, but frequently they like to make remarks about facets of my life or tease me and stuff. That or try to tug me into their story to write it, which sometimes works. Or when I want to write, they go off and hide or are captured by Wrytorz Blok and leave me stranded. (Not only that, but I have a Muse in charge of all this crazy stuff who doesn't always work for me. It gets rather interesting sometimes. xP)

Rosey wrote:Life gets interesting when your friend also has very talkative characters, so your characters get to be friends with theirs, and your conversations are frequently hijacked by characters making remarks, on both sides, usually with one character starting and ending with at least two talking, if not five or six...

Ditto. :P
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Fri Jul 29, 2011 6:14 am
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crescent says...



My characters don't really visit me. Sometimes I imagine them lurking around in their world though and what they could be doing right now. A lot of people say their characters talk to them and it makes me sad that mine don't talk to me... often... My MC just called me dumb today. I asked her why. She told me that humans are overrated. Mostly, when I write, things just happen. I have a general idea about what's going to happen and the characters/I decide the specifics or add a twist to the story. E.g. My MC decided that she was going to have a dream about a childhood memory where she carved her name into Heather's (another elf's) arm. Then in the second chapter Heather decided she was going to have a crush on another dark elf and Bradan, the MC's protector, decided he was a total jerk. I don't walk around pretending to be my characters, I just imagine different scenarios and their reactions. Dossiers don't work for me. -_-
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Fri Jul 29, 2011 3:40 pm
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Master_Yoda says...



I do have this one story in which my character realizes that he's a part of a story. He then starts screaming at me to stop toying around with his life.

It is only under extreme stress that my characters will start actually talking to me. Fortunately, I'm good at putting 'em into stressful scenarios.
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Fri Jul 29, 2011 11:14 pm
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EmilyofREL says...



My characters talk to me a lot...not too me, but they never shut up talking to each other or trying to tell me about their lives.
My favorite quote "writer's block, when your imaginary friends won't talk to you." :)
Formerly EmilytheNovelist
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Sat Jul 30, 2011 3:08 am
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TheWalkinDude says...



Gotta say, most of my characters tend to be representations of myself or people I know. I change things up as far as history and characteristics go, but to keep things simple, I stick with personalities I'm used to, such as humourists, ironists, angry faces, smart asses, optimistic pessimists, B.A. personalities, the heart-of-gold goof, and so on, so forth. Due to this, I already know many things about said person or character, so I don't need to talk to them, I just have to put them into situations and think of the best resolution, whether it be best for the character or myself.

Although, the times I do have conversations with my characters, they usually end in epic battles or combative situations, most of which I win with the good ole machete.
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Sat Jul 30, 2011 12:12 pm
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Yuriiko says...



Pat Buchanan? ^^


I'm not really sure of my characters talking to me. It's more like I'm talking to them.
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Sat Jul 30, 2011 5:45 pm
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LadySpark says...



They don't really talk to me directly, but they do talk and it's strange. Mostly, I just eavesdrop in. The only reason why they really talk to me is if I write this situation, and they don't fit well in it, and they're like, "NO. This is what happened instead! See how much more horrible it is?" And it's pretty dramatic.



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Sat Jul 30, 2011 10:05 pm
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Sierra says...



Yeah. Mine are incredibly stubborn, and refuse to do pretty much anything that will make life easy for me =P I have perfectly planned out scenes that end halfway through because they think I've got my point across, blondes becoming redheads - though that one was a false alarm - and a character whose name I've tried to change a grand total of four time. And he keeps rejecting them. Argh! :smt021
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Sun Jul 31, 2011 1:01 am
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eldEr says...



It used to be me pretending to be them, and I still do that if they're a newer character that I haven't gotten to know very well yet.

But the more I wrote, the more my characters seemed to gain their own voices? Most of the time, if I'm staring out into space, they'll start arguing with each other over whose story is better, or who has the cuter face, or anything they can think of to argue about. Then they have to come to ME to solve their problems. I distinctly remember one of my co-lab characters arguing with one of my novel characters over which one had the most complicated love-life. That was interesting to listen in on.

And then, if I've neglected them for a while, they stop talking to me and mysteriously, one day, they'll pop up again. And, they'll have made a bunch of changes. (Like Dellan developing his random drinking problems, and Zel gaining mysterious powers that she so did not have before.) It's annoying when they do that.

A writer's subconscious is a strange place.
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Sun Jul 31, 2011 12:14 pm
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originalhobbit says...



My characters talk to me sometimes, but, like others, they mainly talk to each other. I do tend to have conversations with them when I am under high stress though, or when I'm having a particularly bad bout of writer's block. When my creativity is flowing they don't talk to me at all, they just sort of tell my pencil or pen where to go. I know it sounds cheesy, but it's the only way I can describe it.
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Sun Jul 31, 2011 8:00 pm
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Spyndlethread says...



Mine chatter away. Some of them, anyway--some are very quiet.
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