I was having a discussion with a friend on Facebook this morning about why a real human being can feel sadness over a fictional character. Another of his friends stated that it’s because the writer has done a good job. But is it really only that?

When I create a character, the first thing I come up with is a mental image. With that image comes nuances in dress, movement and speech patterns. From there, especially from the speech patterns, I begin to see where they live, how they grew up and what brought them to the place where I insert them into a story. With all this information they take on a life of their own and from there on in, I become more of a spectator in their world than the person directing them. I may know where they will eventually end up, but how they get there depends entirely on how their life has evolved to put them in my story in the first place.

I wish I could remember where I read it, (and if you know or even better if someone reading this was the one who said it first PLEASE take credit for it!) but something that affected me profoundly was the statement that, (paraphrasing)  “if the characters I create become real, then I feel very bad for what I put them through in my story.”  I do think the characters I create have an existence somewhere in the world. Call me crazy. But this very thing is what makes it possible to relate to them, and why a reader can be happy for them or grieve for them.

Getting back to my original point, I don’t entirely take credit for having done a good job when my readers feel for my characters. They tell my stories – I’m just along for the ride. They have, as I do, their own private thoughts, and their own private world.