Letting your fictional characters write the story

[John Dean]

I have written in my blogs before about the way that characters can assume a life of their own and that the author has to recognise those occasions when the story is writing itself through the organic evolution of its characters.

That has happened with the latest DCI Jack Harris novel which I am writing for my publisher The Book Folks. I found myself approaching the end of the first draft still unsure who the murderer was – indeed, I had changed my mind half a dozen times!

It’s not that I had not done the requisite planning ahead of starting to write. It was just that the plot presented me with several people who had good reason to kill and each twist took me in a new direction.

How did it resolve itself? Well, I decided to keep writing and see where the characters took me, how the story would draw together the different threads into a cohesive piece of fiction. Yes, I know that this is where writing steers close to madness, that the characters are not real, but they feel it to me and I was happy to let them tell their own story.

The result? A story that has the reader guessing throughout (just like it has with its creator!) and a conclusion that surprises and stays long in the memory. I hope.