Do your characters in your novel talk to you or is it just me.

I don't know. I got invested in my characters enough to just have them talk to me. It's not an auditory thing- definitely from the imagination, but still...

I'm just concerned that I'm alone on this...

Moved from OTC to Writer's Block.

Not just you. I've had long interviews with my characters, while taking walks specifically just to ask them questions and get ideas for my story. And I've had them appear many more times than that... though, that was with my old story. My new story hasn't had that yet...

...But I'm planning to go interview them later today or tomorrow...

I have my fictional chars talk to me. It helps with getting their personality as well as "how would they react in x situation" problems.

I remember reading (though I don't remember where) that a good tip is to actively ask questions of your characters (I presume within the confines of your head if you're out in public) to get a better idea of their histories, ideas, style of speech etc.

My characters frequently have sudden random conversations with me or each other and I write down the ones that would fit into the story. I keep a separate file for such random thoughts/conversations (I also have one for random scene ideas and another for general notes that occur to me) so I can dump them there even if they're way out of sequence and they don't get lost/forgotten.

My characters frequently refuse to follow plans and start heading off in their own direction; you're definitely not alone.

Occasionally they reinvent themselves—one character decided she'd enter her story as a homeless girl who got kidnapped for prostitution instead of being a wealthy young teacher, and another character decided not just to be bisexual, but to be an intersex person who got "helped" at birth by a doctor who took off hir boy parts without hir parents' consent.

Then a character for another story went "yo, I'mma take over the next couple of chapters, but I swear it's plot-related so please no deleting or trimming. I even got a way to speed up the plot, see!" And yeah, I have to admit he's right.

edited 8th Aug '14 12:50:22 PM by Sharysa

No they do not.

I visualize characters like I'm digging a tunnel. I learn more and more about them the deeper I get. If I don't like where it's going, I stop digging, and go another direction. I control the general flow, but my subconscious/characters supply the gems.

My characters constantly talk to me in my mind which is why I get great feedback from my characters whenever I do what they say, it's buried in my subconscious, their voices and sometimes they comment on my stories. It's like they have a voice of their own

My characters dont talk to me, but they talk to each other, in my head, all the time.

Well, my characters don't talk to me, but I do have a certain fondness for them.

Mine don't talk to me. I tend to get inside their heads instead.

One women in the writing group I was part of said that her's talked to her, but I'm not sure if it was true, or if she was trying to sound deep (she was a fairly unpleasant human being).

Regardless, I wouldn't worry about it.

I remember a time when my characters regularly talked to me and generally acknowledged my existence, a long time ago and early in my writing career. Back then, I was a lot more attached to my characters, in the problematic manner of viewing them as friends and not wanting bad things to happen to them. I can't even remember the last time I've had my characters act on their own, refuse to do something, etc.; I'm a lot more detached from them now.

That's not to say that everything about them is a conscious decision- I get mental images all the time of them doing random stuff that has no relevance to any plot. For instance, I've been just picturing this one character seemingly behaving like a villainous figure for whatever reason (Don't be shy! I don't bite! *grins*). This is also how I come up with interests, hobbies, and other tertiary flavor-adding things- I don't usually have a direction, I don't actively scroll through traits in my head, they just pop up. But at this level, it might be hard to tell what's the result of the characters having autonomy, my subconscious speaking, or if it's all me and I don't realize it because I'm not consciously aware of how my own brain functions.

I have to confess, I know how my characters talk, the words they would select in a given situation to express a given idea, but I have only very vague ideas of their diction and none of the actual sound of their voices in most cases.

I can hear mine in my head reasonably well and have a decent feel for their diction, pitch, pacing. But I am very oriented around a character's presence.

My characters talk to me all the time. Moreover, I talk as them a lot. I've found this is a great way to work out dialogue before I write it. Makes sense to me, at any rate. :)

This and this

When I was looking for lead names I was looking for meaningful names. The lead female was quick and easy, but I could not find the male. My mind wandered back to the 80's when my English Teacher was explaining the name Gabriel Oak in Far From The Madding Crowd.

"My name's Gabriel."
"No it's not. That's just my mind latching onto what Mr Wholley said."
"Yes, it is."

After about two days of this I looked at him and said "Is it really" and he nodded.

I have two characters who MAY have slept together, but won't tell me.

@original post. It's not just you but you're pretty close to being alone. Mind you, it's a good thing you have there.

I wouldn't say any of my characters talk to me, but my stories tend to tell me their ending relatively early on. Usually once I have an idea of a few chapters (whether the first 4 or five or a few from around the story) the ending of the story pops in my head. It might go through two or three revisions but the main flow and plot of the ending never changes after that.