Why are my characters always in my head?
Characters in stories I haven't even written because I have several other stories that I am working on or that I need to plan and research for.
Last night, I had a new character pop into my head. Her first name is Ophelia. Her mother died when she was a baby and her father is an English professor who hates modern society and kept his daughter sheltered from the outside world.
Ophelia is nineteen and works in a used bookstore. She never wears pants because she was raised to never wear them. She listens to folk and classical music and doesn't watch TV. She studies Classics and English Literature at her college. She was homeschooled and can speak or at least read and write in several different languages.
She's a snob and naive of the world outside of her sphere.
What am I going to do with her? I don't know, but I'll come up with something.
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This happens to me all the time. Characters appear in the middle of the night, and I think about them, nail down their backstories and histories, and then scribble it all down on paper so I can work on them later.
ReplyDeleteOr, if a keyboard is nearby, I'll open a file and my fingers will fly over the keys; I work in an intense fury until finally the last bit of inspiration is exhausted. Then I save the file in a special file for characters. Later, while working on one manuscript or another, I review the scene and decide if I can add something to the story by pulling a character out of "storage".
What you're describing is literally Inspiration At Work. Don't fight it; use it!