There are times when I feel like I am going insane. I usually have a running narration in my head that expresses all of my innermost thoughts. When I am working on my creative projects, suddenly my designated narrator in my noggin isn’t the only voice I hear.
I feel like other authors out there will understand me when I say that my characters talk to me. At times, it can be nonstop! Especially when I am in the brainstorming process and generating ideas for whatever new project I’ve got up my sleeve.
The characters ultimately determine which project I work on next. It’s whichever voice screams the loudest at me. That’s how Happily Never Afterlife became the frontrunner that ultimately became my debut novel. It was never my intention for my first novel to be a romcom, but the characters would not shut up! I needed a moment of peace, and sometimes the only way a writer can find it is to get the voices out of our heads and onto the page.
All too often, my stories begin with a question I want to create an answer for, but it’s almost always answered by a character that pops up out of nowhere. It’s honestly pretty cool – and sometimes annoying when I’m trying to sleep.
It’s in these moments that I really love how my mind works. I’ve always been a creative person, and in my younger days, I did a lot of theater in high school and my community. I love getting into character when I am playing a role in a play or even just improvising on the fly when I’m playing one of my D&D characters. It always excites me to see just how my characters play out and what they bring to the overall story.
My novels and short stories are no exception.
It’s hard to describe what exactly happens in my brain when I start “thinking” like one of my characters. I know in some ways, each character has a piece of me inside of them, but each voice I hear feels uniquely them rather than an extension of me. I can hear their pitch and inflections, their accents, how they hold their mouths to make the sounds. I can sense their pain and their motivations. They feel like fully realized people who are dropping by to tell me their stories, and I faithfully dictate them.
For Happily Never Afterlife, I felt like my main characters were the loudest characters I’ve met so far. I’ve begun working on several other novels with their own cast of characters, and yet none of them were as boisterous and demanding of my attention as Mae Carmine and Rand Blakely. Before I even began writing the story, I created a word doc just to write down the quips and banter they were firing back and forth in my head. These two were feisty and funny, and I was most excited to tell their story first.
It’s hard to accurately describe what it feels like to have voices in your head that talk to you in the way fictional characters do. I think if you’re a creative person, you’ll understand the eccentricities of the experience better than someone who can’t comprehend the insanity. Let’s face it, we are a bit insane and eccentric to talk to our characters. Not everyone is going to understand it, and that’s okay! It’s our job to accurately transcribe and build the voices we hear into fully realized characters on the page. I just think that the clearer I hear my characters talking to me, the better their story will be when it’s all said and done.
It’s one of my favorite parts of my creative process. I have the vague concept for my stories. I may have some locations in mind and a basic premise for the plot. What’s most fun is when my characters show up and introduce themselves to me. They influence how the story plays out. I will do my best to create an outline of where I expect the story to go, but all too often, the characters will steer me in other directions. They develop as the story develops, and it’s always a fun journey. I had actual audible gasps when I wrote the first drafts of Happily Never Afterlife when a character revealed something that I wasn’t expecting! Yes, I have been shocked by my own characters! Writers can be shocked by their own creations. Who knew?!
In another example, in 2020, I began writing my first novel draft. It’s a story based on a dream I had when I was 17, and six years ago, I finally had the skills and time to start writing it. The two main characters, Seraphina and Derek, were the ones speaking to me for years. Seraphina, in particular, was the character demanding that I tell this story. As I began crafting the story and expanding it from the very limited fragments I recalled from my dream, more voices emerged. Suddenly, I had a cast of main characters and a story that expanded well beyond the events of one book. Because of these characters speaking their truths in my mind, I am now working on a trilogy with a spinoff prequel in order to tell their stories.
But translating their voices onto the page isn’t always easy. I have to determine which point of view will be the best to tell the story. In Happily Never Afterlife, it made the most sense to frame the story from Mae’s perspective. In the case of my trilogy, it made sense to tackle this from a third-person perspective to help jump from each moving piece in the story. There are too many locations and characters in that story to be limited to just one perspective. For future stories, I am planning to write in dual POVs between two main characters, which will be a new endeavor for me.
Really, it all depends on how the story needs to be told. And while I appreciate the input from my characters (and I will transcribe their quotes as directly as possible), ultimately it’s the writer’s call to build the story in the way that makes the most sense. Each novel and plot structure has different needs that influence the voice of how it gets told. It’s always exciting to see my story taking shape and letting the characters lead me through their journeys.
It sounds crazy, and perhaps I should get tested, but I truly love connecting and talking with my characters. As a child, I had so many imaginary friends. My Barbie dolls had their own personalities with full storylines. I was always surrounded by voices of characters in my head, and I never thought it was weird. I’ve always been a creative and imaginative soul, and it feels like a gift to connect in such an intimate way. I’m fully aware that these characters in my head aren’t real, but does that really matter? When I listen to them all day and night for years of my life, and when I put them on the page, they become real to me in a unique way.
As I wrap up Happily Never Afterlife and prepare to send my latest imaginary friends into the world, I feel a sense of pride and excitement about their continuing to live on in the hearts of my readers. And I look towards the future at my pile of projects waiting to be worked on, close my eyes, and listen for the voices to shout their names and tell me their stories.
