When Characters Write Themselves

I've mentioned it here before but sometimes characters write themselves. I always thought authors were ... not really kidding but using hyperbole when they said that, but I'm telling you, that shit is for real. You'll find yourself writing something with absolutely no idea where it's coming from. The story will take off in a direction you never intended. They may be your fingers flying over the keyboard but the words don't seem like they're yours at all.

It can be ... disconcerting, to say the least. Disconcerting and yet, most of the time, awesome as all get-out.

The most recent example I have of this is the latest chapter of my current Once Upon a Time story. It's a series of sequential mid- and post-ep one-shots chronicling Emma finding a place to belong over the course of the first season. Little unseen moments between the scenes.

This conceit of mine became an issue when I got up to "Hat Trick." We spent most of the episode with Emma so unseen moments were few and far between, but there was too much good material within the episode for me to bypass it entirely. I rewatched the episode, found my span of unseen time, and started to write.

And what came out ... that was all Emma and Mary Margaret. It was not me at all. Believe me, I know how it sounds when I say things like that. These people don't really exist, and even if they did exist, they most certainly would not choose to have their conversations through, you know, me. But it does happen, and I don't know that it's something you can fully understand until it happens to you.

I certainly didn't understand it. Hell, it's happened to me more than a few times and I still don't understand it. But it's a real thing that happens and what it results in can be really cool.

Don't believe me? Check out the chapter below, entitled "Family By Choice." And believe me when I tell you that I have no freaking clue where this came from.

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