It wasn’t easy to find this image. It’s from a movie, The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm: Jakob Grimm, deathly ill, is visited by the characters from his fairy tales who need him to get better because they can’t exist without him.
Oh, but they can! They can!
The trick to writing fiction that the reader can believe in is to write about your characters as if they were real people (and about your locations as if they were real places). Bear in mind that all of them have lives that go well beyond the little piece you’re writing about. If they live for you, they’ll live for the reader, too.
One of the things I really enjoy, as a writer, is seeing a character enter a story as a walk-on and then stay in the story, and grow into a major character. Some of your fictional characters can really surprise you–like, I never dreamed, never even suspected, Lord Orth would turn out the way he did.
After I learned how to control a story, I learned I didn’t have to.
Think that over for a while!
Let’s see – are you saying you are now on auto-pilot? 🙂 TV characters can take on a real life also. We have been watching “NCIS” for years, and Jethro Gibbs is like a member of the family.
I hope you don’t give him an allowance.