Theories Two - Anita Lives in My Keyboard

She really does.

Right there, on the right, just beside that scroll lock key no one uses.  No one uses it, so it's the safest place for her I guess.

You probably wonder why I have a twelve year old girl living in my keyboard.  That's simple, she likes to write.  Mostly she likes to write about, well, Anita.  She wrote and entire novel about herself.  That would be pretty cool, except it wasn't supposed to be about her at all.  It was the beginning of the grand joke on my editors where I tell them I'm writing one thing then Anita writes something else.

She's constantly interrupting me and asking me if she can play while I'm writing.  At twelve I guess she doesn't understand why, if the other characters in the scene get to play she can't.  If I don't pay close attention to her, as a parent should a child, I'll catch her playing on my keyboard all by herself.

She's trying to write this blog, and doing pretty well at it.

Now you have to understand I have a lot of characters that live in my head.  I have many, many more who exist on virtual paper and, I guess, a few copies of real paper as well.  Only one lives on my keyboard though.

My goal is to have more live in my keyboard.  Characters that actually live in your head are rare.  I have four up there.  Those that live in your keyboard are like the fabled calico tomcat.  Anita has one; his name is Sparkles.  She wrote him herself.  Some say they don't exist, but there he is, doing backflips off of the pause key.

The point to be made here is that characters should do what they want to, not what you want them to.  Trying to force a character into a situation they don't want to be in is futile.  The greatest case of writer's block I ever had was because I put a character in a situation where there was only one outcome.  Then tried to get him to do something else.

They won't listen to you, stop trying.  If you haven't built the want, need, desire, and motivation into the character before you put them in a situation where you expect an outcome don't be at all surprised if it doesn't turn out like you intended to.

The consequence of failing here is the destruction of the readers' suspension of disbelief.  Nothing is more fatal to a story than that. 

There are times that you need to rethink the setting or situation you place your characters in.  You imagine a scene without imagining how the characters will react ahead of time.  If it happens, and they don't react as you wish, consider changing the scene, but don't try to force the characters.  It never works, but it seems harder to change a carefully crafted scene that you've envisioned than it is to just simply make the characters do what you want them to.

If this has never happened to you then you may want to re-examine the characters.  Do any live in your keyboard, or in your head?  If not, look at them more closely.

-Ezzy