Definitely they write themselves. It's an amazing experience. It's like the characters have come alive and are sitting on my shoulder talking to me, telling me their tales.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I'm not one of these 'the characters write themselves; the story just fell out of me' kind of writers. Wish it was like that.
I normally write in the first person, and my narrators are as real to me as any of the people I have worked with. They live and breathe in my imagination.
Writers often say that characters begin to write themselves, and I never used to believe that. I always thought that was complete hogwash.
Writing is a mysterious process, and many ideas come from deep within the imagination, so it's very hard to say how characters come about. Mostly, they just happen.
I'm constantly being surprised and finding unplanned things - because the writing is a process of experiencing things on the ground with the characters.
A lot of the stories I've read about myself, I don't even recognize who they're writing about.
The interesting thing about fiction from a writer's standpoint is that the characters come to life within you. And yet who are they and where are they? They seem to have as much or more vitality and complexity as the people around you.
I think writers write for their consciences, they write for their own true audiences, for their souls.
Once you have your characters, they tell you what to write, you don't tell them.
I know when I go and see a writer, the first thing I think to myself is, 'Are they the character in the book?' You just can't help it; it's the way people are.
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