Most writers feel this, I think. I certainly have. I want to feel it. I strive to feel it. I’m talking about when your characters seem to take over and make things happen. Maybe it is just finding the place, the altered state, which allows you to access that part of the brain that makes intuitive leaps. I try to get to this place every time I write.
Your characters and their story become real in that moment.
Sometimes your characters take you places you hadn’t thought of or intended to go and these places are the right places for your story. Some of the truest writing comes from these moments because it’s coming from inside the world of the characters and story. You aren’t forcing it. You aren’t designing it. The characters seem to be real and you’re just trying to keep up and write down what happens to them and how they think and feel.
Of course sometimes you have to force your story. Sometimes you have to work things out and plan a scene and re-imagine something that’s happened that seems wrong. You have to strategically plan a plot.
But what is better is you are in that altered state (I get to this by writing every day at the same time, rereading the last chapter I wrote the day before, writing in the same place, really trying to focus on writing and ignoring all the distractions I try to create for myself to pull me away from writing). It’s often when you’re writing WITHOUT THINKING that the characters seem to take over and you write some of your best scenes.
Happy Writing…
