Non-writers don't get the chance to play 'god' (lc deliberate). We do - and find how involving it is to interact with our creations. And how much responsibility it entails.

denise

To me, you are speaking about the messiness and complexity of the human condition. That "nice" person probably has all sorts of demons, just as that "awful" person probably has a secret tenderness and nobility. There's no end to the discoveries! we can make as we get to know our characters and accompany them on their adventures—how lucky we are!

Thank you! I'm so glad it was useful to you!

These were tough lessons for me to learn, I have to admit 🙂 To find the contemptible aspect of the character you love, and the noble aspect of the character you dislike. What that means, I think, is to find the humanity in each character. Our characters need to be as full of contradictions as we are!

It's so interesting, isn't it—how some characters come to life easily, and some do not? One strategy (thanks to Don Maass) is to st the elusive character across from you at a coffee shop and have a conversation with her. Ask each other the most challenging questions you have, and see what the two of you have to say to each other!

I have an explicit line in my 'process' that says: Become the character.

I'm a slow writer, but I've transformed into each character as many times as there are scenes from their pov, and it's always a wrench, because only rarely do I stay in one character's pov for more than a scene. There's some overlap, but most of the time I have figured out which parts of me, fully expressed instead of half suppressed and competing for attention, go with which character.

Probably for the same reason that many writers have: there's SO much material there - so many ways of rearranging what is never allowed expression in polite society - that I could write the rest of my life and barely tap it.

As I tell my husband: I am not a nice person. I work very hard to appear nice - I have to live in the world - but I don't know what I'd do with some of that if I didn't write fiction, which thrives on conflict (followed by peace, even if it's the peace of a stalemate).

I'm not sure genuinely nice people would be able to write fiction. Not the kind we're talking about.