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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/47736
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/47736
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

You're asking how a character, a creation of your imagination, can have free will. It's not easy for me to answer, because "they do". On a very fundamental level, that's what happens when I write. I 'find' my characters, I 'find out' who they are. I can look at an in-story event and say 'this is true', or 'this is false, it couldn't have happened'.

Let me try to delve deeper into what this 'true' means.

I'm sure when you read, you can spot if a character acts "out of character". And you can probably imagine how a character would respond to a situation they haven't encountered before. Criticism levied at fanfics is very often that the characters "would never act this way". What is meant by that?

As a reader, you get to know a character the same way you get to know a person: you observe their actions, you are party to the thoughts they share with you. Think of your friends: you can imagine how they'd answer certain questions, you know how they'd act in certain situations. It's the same with characters - you establish the same kind of familiarity with them, so you can spot when something is "off".

Now, when you are writing, your characters are not pawns that you move on a board at will. Your characters - you're trying to make them complete people. The kind of people whom one could get to know, just as we've discussed above. The way you do it, is you think of them as people. You ask yourself what would this person do, how they would respond, what situation could provoke a certain reaction from them. You carry them in your mind just as you carry your friends in your mind - as complete people, not lists of traits.

You are your characters' god. You put them in all kinds of situations. Doing this, you find out how this "person" you've created in your mind would respond. You can imagine how your friend would respond to an unexpected situation, right? Same here. And if you think about it, you know your characters more intimately than your best friends - you share every thought of theirs. That's where surprises come from, intuiting, "finding what's right". You treat the characters as people.

Original score: 5