I've been doing readings from my fiction since the 90’s and one of the common questions I get afterwards is "Do your characters ever tell you what to do?" or "Do your characters ever get away from you?"
Of course it's all us. Spontaneous generation from all the things happening in our heads at all times. But it's a lot of fun to think characters talk to us or lead an independent life. We all have a Frankenstein complex. It's only slightly delusional. All our characters are us, after all. Saying that we create characters sounds better than saying we have multiple personalities... or are all method actors. :)
Robert Grudin did something very clever with that notion: for his novel Book, all the blurbs on the back cover are from characters in the book. It's hilarious.
Now why didn't I think of that for my praise page, lol! There's also that gimmick in some blogs: the character interview... It is now an overcooked cliche.
Everything designed to get writers more PR turns stale in time. When I started publishing books, postcards and bookmarks were big, ditto any theme-related tschotkes. Followed by--in now real order--websites, blog tours, a presence on Twitter/FB/Insta, working the folks at Goodreads, book trailers, blogging and so on.....
Of course it's all us. Spontaneous generation from all the things happening in our heads at all times. But it's a lot of fun to think characters talk to us or lead an independent life. We all have a Frankenstein complex. It's only slightly delusional. All our characters are us, after all. Saying that we create characters sounds better than saying we have multiple personalities... or are all method actors. :)
Robert Grudin did something very clever with that notion: for his novel Book, all the blurbs on the back cover are from characters in the book. It's hilarious.
Now why didn't I think of that for my praise page, lol! There's also that gimmick in some blogs: the character interview... It is now an overcooked cliche.
Everything designed to get writers more PR turns stale in time. When I started publishing books, postcards and bookmarks were big, ditto any theme-related tschotkes. Followed by--in now real order--websites, blog tours, a presence on Twitter/FB/Insta, working the folks at Goodreads, book trailers, blogging and so on.....