An author's characters do what he wants them to do.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
The writer of stories or of novels settles on men and imitates them; he exhausts the possibilities of his characters.
Every character a writer creates has some of themselves in it somewhere.
A lot of readers want characters to behave in a responsible way, or they want to understand the characters' dilemma and act, in a way, on their behalf.
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.
You just play what a writer writes, in terms of what a character chooses to do and how a character chooses to deal with their various relationships.
Readers will stay with an author, no matter what the variations in style and genre, as long as they get that sense of story, of character, of empathetic involvement.
What I hate in fiction is when the author knows better than the characters what they should do.
Novels demand a certain complexity of narrative and scope, so it's necessary for the characters to change.
The reader is going to imprint on the characters he sees first. He is going to expect to see these people often, to have them figure largely into the story, possibly to care about them. Usually, this will be the protagonist.
When the characters are really alive before their author, the latter does nothing but follow them in their action, in their words, in the situations which they suggest to him.