My characters are pod people! Are yours?

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I just published Part 20 of my series Catwalk Confidence and I have a few minutes while my characters are distracted to get this information out. This isn't my story! My story took a completely different tract. My characters were different. Alex was really born male!

I started this innocently enough; Alex seemed like such a nice kid. He was the typical teenage boy doing typical teenage boy stuff. Then it happened. Early in my writing of this story Alex changed. I was sound asleep and around three in the morning he woke me up and forced me to write what you have read so far. This character seems like Alex, even acts and does the same stuff that Alex did, but I know different and I must get the word out.

If it could happen to my characters, it could happen to yours too. They'll take over your writing, force you in directions you never imagined before. Be vigilant, and don't sleep.

NO! Get out! Get out now! Save yourselllll……………….!

Hello,

I'm sorry for the disturbed ramblings you've just read. Please just ignore it. It means nothing. I'm afraid I may be a bit tired.

Hmm, you look a bit tired too. Why don't you lay here my dear and just take a little nap.

Love Connie

Comments

I'm a

long time role-player and often we do what's called free form or what the kids called LARP now a days. Anyway once we get into a flow or in the moment things can happen or are said that we never intended but can change everything. I have found it happens in my writing too. I think it happens when a good writer comes in contact with a good character.

Bailey Summers

Pod people? I think not!

Not at all, Connie! Not at all!

Pod people are characters who have no will of their own and mindlessly follow their author's agenda.

I too understand the remarkable phenomenon of my characters developing their own free will & asserting it, oftentimes wreaking havoc in my carefully constructed world. All I can do is to watch & chronicle their ill-advised behaviors that flow from their frailties & misunderstandings.

Likewise, your own characters' actions must have emerged from their own personalities, their own ideas & how they perceive their conflicts. Sounds to me like in your semi-conscious alpha-state, you've achieved something rumored to be known as "character development." This puts you at risk of having a serious literary achievement. :-)

Not to worry! You can always "take back" your characters & force them to obey you.

Or can you?

Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!

The Rev. Anam Chara+

Anam Chara