History Main / IJustWriteTheThing

!!Examples:

* Matsuri Akino, writer of ''{{Pet Shop of Horrors}}'', often speaks of Leon and D as if they were real people in her commentaries. A skit featuring Leon's ADayInTheSpotlight chapter, ''Doom'' depicted the author as a director and the characters as increasingly disgruntled actors.
** In ''Kamen Tantei'', she actually made IJustWriteTheThing the centre of a plot - an obsessed fan is furious that her favourite character has been PutOnABus. The writer tells her to get a grip, and maintains that after writing the series for such a long time, her role is simply to make sure the characters play nicely together - the plot writes itself. Was this a TakeThat to the author's real-life fans? Who knows, but the characters are pretty emphatic that there are forces beyond the writer's control at work.

* In-universe example in {{Bakuman}}: The reason why Niizuma Eiji can formulate plots so quickly is apparently because he can "see his characters move on their own."

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* In some of the ''{{Calvin and Hobbes}}'' books, Watterson speaks as if he's just letting Calvin run loose to see what he does.
** In the Tenth Anniversary collection, he says that he found Calvin and Susie's relationship initially to be too forced, and in the second arc he just let the characters bounce off one another.
* Lynn Johnston often used this when discussing ''{{For Better or for Worse}}''. Dissenters consider this her way of abdicating responsibility for poor narrative decisions, but you can definitely see how characters would take on lives of their own after nearly 30 years.
* PeterDavid was once asked why he wrote a particular rape scene in an issue of ''[[{{Aquaman}} The Atlantis Chronicles]]''. His response? "Because that's what happened." He steadfastly rejects any suggestion that he was ultimately in control of the plot.

* This, and TrueArtIsAngsty, tends to be JossWhedon's justification for killing off any of his characters. [[AnyoneCanDie Which he tends to do.]]

* TamoraPierce's leading lady, [[TortallUniverse Alanna]], was apparently so annoyed at marrying Jonathan and being made queen that she demanded her writer ''go back and rewrite half the book''.
* The "omnipotent plot" example is played with humourously with Lemony Snickett's ''{{A Series of Unfortunate Events}}''. He's [[LiteraryAgentHypothesis supposedly narrating]] the thing, so naturally he expresses great sympathy and regret during the horrible events that occur within the book.
* TerryPratchett has often remarked that his characters take on lives of their own, and how they turn out quite differently from how he originally envisioned them. Vimes is a notable case: He began as simply a placeholder character in ''Discworld/GuardsGuards'' to [[DecoyProtagonist tell the story in Ankh-Morpork until Carrot got there]], and ended up basically [[SpotlightStealingSquad taking over the Watch series]]. This mirrors his in-universe CharacterDevelopment, where he's gone from a drunken beat cop to an intercontinental MemeticBadass.
** Also notable is the true identity of Ronnie Soak. Pratchett found out about it about the same time the characters did.
** Also referenced in ''Discworld/EqualRites'':
-->Because this is also a story about sex, although probably not in the athletic, tumbling, count-the-legs-and-divide-by-two sense unless the characters get totally beyond the author's control. They might.
* This is a running theme in the final arc of ''TheDarkTower'' series. The author, StephenKing, shows how real the story is by giving the characters so much life that he himself appears as a character. And it actually works, partly because he's distinctly unflattering to himself. In the final book, he starts leaving the characters little notes in medicine cabinets as an acknowledged deus ex machina -- he knows what happens and so can warn them, but says repeatedly that he's sure as hell not making it happen.
** This is actually King's usual style of writing--put people with certain personalities in certain situations, then extrapolate what they would do. In ''On Writing'' he compares it to digging something up rather than making it. (He can write in a more normal style, but with the exception of ''TheDeadZone'' he usually dislikes the results.)
* Jonathon Stroud, author of ''TheBartimaeusTrilogy'', said he experimented with various endings, but only one was truthful to the story and the characters. [[spoiler: In the end Nathaniel, one of the main characters, dies.]]
* T.S. Eliot wrote entire essays based around the belief that writing is fundamentally intellectual, not passionate, and the author is simply a vessel for the work. This was a rebellion against the Romantic poets who claimed that all work comes from the author's heart and thus there is no "impersonal" writing.
* Louise Rennison often speaks of [[ConfessionsOfGeorgiaNicolson Georgia]] this way - although given that she's stated that Georgia is pretty much [[AuthorAvatar the writer herself]] as a teenager, the character technically ''is'' a real person.

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* Parodied in TerrorIsland, where the writers claim that their [[strike:comics]] theorems are logically derived from universal axioms and they have no control over their content.

* In the ''{{Anne of Green Gables}}'' books, Anne has expressed this mentality from time to time regarding her characters. Diana is mystified as to why a writer can't kill off one of their characters if it would serve dramatic purposes.

* Thomas Harris used this as an excuse for the ending of {{Hannibal}}, citing the old story of the sultan who said, "I do not ''keep'' falcons; they ''live'' with me."

* Towards the end of RohlDahl's Henry Sugar story, Dahl/the narrator goes off on a tangent about how the story would end if it were just a story being written by some guy. But since it's a TRUE STORY he goes on to explain that's NOT what happens and details the actual not-quite-an-ending (ie Life goes on) that "really happened"

** Which is kind of odd, as they're based on an idealized version of her and her family.
*** I don't see why that's odd -- if any characters were going to behave independently of the author, it makes sense it would be the ones who start out with some degree of independent existence.

* This, and TrueArtIsAngsty, tends to be JossWhedon's justification for killing off any of his characters. [[AnyoneCanDie Which he tends to do.]] A LOT.

* GregWeisman, creator of ''{{Gargoyles}}'' has recounted a few plot points in this fashion. In particular, the revelation that [[spoiler:Puck is Owen]] came in a flash of "so ''that's'' it!" rather than "wouldn't it be neat if...?"

--> Is he really the cowardly scoundrel he paints himself to be, or far more courageous than he gives himself credit for? To be perfectly honest, I don't really know, although I suspect a little of both; but that's one of the real joys of a writer's life. I may have invented him in the first place, inspired to some extent by Harry {{Flashman}} and Edmund {{Blackadder}}, but by now he's become enough of a personality in his own right to keep surprising me,and long may he continue to do so.

* In the ''VorkosiganSaga'' RPG, it's recommended that the GM ''not'' include Miles Vorkosigan as an NPC. "If you include him, he'll try to take over the plot from the PCs. If he doesn't try to take over the plot, you're not doing him right."

* TerryPratchett has often remarked that his characters take on lives of their own, and how they turn out quite differently from how he originally envisioned them. Vimes is a notable case: He began as simply a placeholder character in ''Discworld/GuardsGuards'' to tell the story in Ankh-Morpork until Carrot got there, and ended up basically taking over the Watch series.

* RayBradbury has said that his characters take on a life of their own, and he often larns new things from them that even he didn't know about. He also criticised the idea that the writer is the boss