Growing attached to your characters

[sunstruckdream]

Does this happen to anyone else?

My characters come alive for me. I feel what they feel. I laugh with them (and at them), I cry for them, and when a character I've grown to love is in pain, my heart feels like it's going to bust out of my chest.

Sometimes I'll hate and love a character at the same time. I know that they're just SO CRUEL and SO EVIL...and I also feel for them, knowing how they got that way.

Does this make sense? Anyone else in the guild ever experience this?

It's part of the reason I love my stories.

 

[violetpen]

Wow - that's great. I can imagine that your characters are quite developed, and that makes for great stories!

 

[Tariel]

yeah....I've declared one of my characters my boyfriend I think that counts as insanely so

 

[CelticRose]

Some of mine have been around for a very long time & I wouldn't know what to do if they didn't pop up at inappropiate moments to give their running commentary on my life & bring me up to date with what's going on in theirs. And what makes you think they're not real anyway? Whose reality? Theirs, mine or yours? (Do not, I repeat, do not call the men in little white lab coats; I'm perfectly sane.)

 

[sunstruckdream]

yeah....I've declared one of my characters my boyfriend I think that counts as insanely so

ok i'll admit i've done that as well

 

[Tariel]

ok i'll admit i've done that as well

They're so much nicer than real ones...much less difficult. I so can't leave these guys alone though

 

[WPZanar07]

Yah, my characters come to life for me all the time. I exercised the imagination when I was very young, so I can place myself in certain roles as that character (Not in PUBLIC....It'd be embarrasing!!!) and sometimes as the bad guy or a temporary fallen hero.

 

[Christianbelle]

ok i'll admit i've done that as well

My friends have called the leading man in my novels my husband - my future husband. The character's name is Wes and whenever they reference to my future guy, they will call him Wes.

 

[Tariel]

My friends have called the leading man in my novels my husband - my future husband. The character's name is Wes and whenever they reference to my future guy, they will call him Wes.

Pretty much everybody out here calls me Tariel (which is the name of Kayhin's wife). They haven't actually called him Kayhin...but...yeah

 

[NeoScribe]

Do girls always want to date one of their characters?

I can't help but get attached to my characters - But then I feel guilty when something bad happens to them. Except for some of the vilians, they're getting what they deserve.

 

[Tariel]

I can't help but get attached to my characters - But then I feel guilty when something bad happens to them. Except for some of the vilians, they're getting what they deserve.

I feel guilty about my vilians too....well some of them anyway. Then again, my vilians do have a habit of changing sides.


And why shouldn't girls want to date their characters?

 

[oncewaslost]

i have enough trouble getting attached to the lead males in other books that i tend to stay away from my own... in saying that, yes, i do get very attached to my characters.

 

[Doubtless]

Sometimes I just lay on my bed and act out in my mind what my characters can or will do. Sometimes I even act out what they should have done, but didn't do!

You know, before this morning, I thought all my characters were just drones, being used by me to create an exciting plot and add to the story. I thought that everyone suffered from what the people on Inheritance Forums called "Heroic Hero Syndrome" where everyone just does whatever and has no personality. But, this morning, I thought about it, and for every character in my book, I can think of a single-sentence description that implies more than I could even know for each character. Not one character has the same personality! That's out of a total of sixteen characters I've done this for!

I don't much get so attached as to change my feelings drastically, but I have done a part of the book from which my current hectalogy is drawn from, in which it was so frightful, and everything was so distraught and ambiguous that I (who was writing alone in my room, at night right in front of my window, looking out onto an empty lawn that housed a single tree from which a hundred shadows stretched and shifted wiht the wind (long sentence, eh?)) had to stop writing and leave the room because some inexplainable fear took me. Seriously, I'm not easily scared, but I was writing so persuasively of my own fears in my story, that I terrified myself!

 

[godzsouljah]

Oh gosh dude, that sounds so freaky.

I can definitely agree with you though. Some mornings I wake up and suddenly I start picturing the last pieces I wrote, or attempting to get around a sore point.

And the main to my w.i.p. is definitely my perfect man. Unfortunately, he's too perfect to exist. I think. (If anyone meets a gorgeous New Zealand-Irish teen, my age, goes by the name Connor, please, let me know!)

 

[sunstruckdream]

ever wish you could take a turn being one of your characters? just for like a day - i don't mean a permanent swap. and probably not on their bad days...i love one of my protagonists to pieces, but i'd prefer not to be her around the time she gets kidnapped, starved, and shot full of drugs. but once that gets worked out, i'd LOVE to get to be her.
anyone else get this? or am i babbling?

 

[dramaking]

Oh gosh dude, that sounds so freaky.

I can definitely agree with you though. Some mornings I wake up and suddenly I start picturing the last pieces I wrote, or attempting to get around a sore point.

And the main to my w.i.p. is definitely my perfect man. Unfortunately, he's too perfect to exist. I think. (If anyone meets a gorgeous New Zealand-Irish teen, my age, goes by the name Connor, please, let me know!)

Does the name really matter?

 

[kevin36]

They have to come alive; otherwise it's just an empty character.

Instead of plotting out my entire story, I simply work out in my mind the main points that I want the characters to be involved in, and from there simply allow them to respond as their personality dictates.

Sometimes I'm even surprised at what happens... But it makes for more realistic characterization, in my mind.

God Bless
Kevin

 

[CJF]

Yeah, it happens to me at times. Most of the time, it has to be a story that I love and just can't stop writing.(which hasn't happened alot.)

 

[sunstruckdream]

But isn't it neat when it does happen? i've actually forgotten to eat because i've been so wrapped up in a story. and aside from the hunger, that's a good feeling =p

 

[METAL]

Yes. That's good writing

gbu

METAL

Does this happen to anyone else?

My characters come alive for me. I feel what they feel. I laugh with them (and at them), I cry for them, and when a character I've grown to love is in pain, my heart feels like it's going to bust out of my chest.

Sometimes I'll hate and love a character at the same time. I know that they're just SO CRUEL and SO EVIL...and I also feel for them, knowing how they got that way.

Does this make sense? Anyone else in the guild ever experience this?

It's part of the reason I love my stories.