You may find yourself hacking away at the jungle one day… and the jungle hacks back. I’m talking about your characters getting all grumpy and misbehaving. In one of my short stories, my main female character got assaulted. First of all, I wasn’t aware that it was going to happen (I’m a pantser, remember?), and secondly, her reaction was just plain completely out of character. So, I’m sitting there, completely flabbergasted with her and the way she handled the reaction, and my jaw is sitting in my lap.
While I’m the author, as well as you, and have complete control of the story… sometimes the people we have running around the pages have a different idea. I’ve had it happen pretty much in every single story I’ve written. My writing group has expressed, many times, how much their characters are running amok. What do we do? Well, there are a few choices we have…
Let ’em do their own thing. See where your guys are going… maybe they’re leading you down a much more interesting path than your original one. If push comes to shove (with characters that you’ve created), you can always go back to where the behavior happened…
Give them a bit of rope. Let your character take the lead, but only give them so far before you pull them back. Sometimes it’s a small diversion or a one time thing, and they’ll go back to their well-behaved (or, misbehaving) self.
Trip ’em up. Show your ire by throwing something else at them to see how they like it when they mess up.
Punish them outright. You’re the author and you aren’t going to brook any kind of bad behavior. Show them what for.
Just don’t use it. If you’re one of those that has an iron fist on the world, then you just don’t even need to use that last phrase that completely stopped production. Why should you? You’re in control.
In my opinion, I’m of the mind of using the first two with a bit of the third one thrown in for the just plain crazy choices that have been made. But, it’s up to you. As long as you realize that these people/critters/robots, etc… are going to jump ship every now and then (maybe a lot depending on the character).
The way I see it… your characters know what they are doing… even if it seems like they aren’t behaving… they really are. It’s surprising to find out just how much your characters know… that you don’t.
So that wild boar that comes running out of the underbrush? It may just help you find your way to the goal in some magical, mystical way you weren’t even imagining… or, it could be lunch. You decide.
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