1-Million-Words

I don’t know about you, but I regularly struggle with the characters taking my ideas, tossing them into the trash, and setting fire to them.  Laughing as they watch me cry because they refuse to cooperate.

I should probably preface this by saying that I am not a plotter.  When I start a story, I usually have a pretty good idea where we’re starting and some vague idea of how I want it to end.  This leaves me without any clear idea of how to get from beginning to end.

And this gives my characters entirely too much wiggle room sometimes.

Does this ever happen to you?  Do you have a particularly unruly character that is constantly going off the rails?  How do you rein them back in – or do you?

For me, there are two.  Zayne Reyes is the obvious answer and H is laughing right now because of it.  He’s unpredictable by nature and even though he’s a creation of my own, there are times when I find myself screaming, “GET BACK HERE RIGHT NOW, WE WERE HAVING A DISCUSSION!”  Like he’s a toddler in a toy store.  Sometimes, it’s best to let him run and others I send the other two boys out to drag him back.

The other is Travis Murphy.  Like Zayne, he can be unpredictable (he is a writer after all), but more often than not, it’s his way of looking at things that causes a traffic jam in my writing.  He’ll say or do something that makes me look at what I’m writing in a completely different light.  Murphy, I let run free.  He’s harmless (unlike that crazy Texan) and things usually turn out better when I listen to him.

Honorable mention: Andrej Zeklos.  His level of tolerance and vast wells of patience often surprise me.  Zayne ought to be thankful because often Andy’s goodwill is the only thing keeping him alive.

What about you?  Do you have a character that refuses to play by the rules or is it just random offenders?  How do you handle it when they don’t want to cooperate?

Happy almost March, guys!