I would also add that if (when) most of what happens in the thought process takes place in the subconscious which, by definition, one is not consciously aware of, trying to describe it scientifically is… somewhat not possible.
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Depends on who’s defining it. A huge part of intuition is pattern recognition. That isn’t mysticism; we can teach computers to do it. But when we do, it quickly throws up mysteries, like the fantastically creepy example of Loab.
Again, this isn’t mysticism: Loab isn’t a ghost. She’s something way more interesting than that: “She is an emergent island in the latent space that we don’t know how to locate with text queries. But for the AI, Loab was an equally strong point of convergence as a verbal concept. And really, it was usually stronger!”
Loab is a pattern that both we and the computer can recognize (and in the computer’s case, reproduce in richly horrific variety) without being able to reduce it to a verbal set of prompts.
For many writers, characters are like that. Patterns they discover, recognize, and as they intuitively feel their way around them they find out new things about them. For other authors, characters are structures built from known elements, lists of traits and motivations, all or mostly capable of being captured in verbal concepts.
The one approach doesn’t reduce to the other. 
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I understand but it’s still not the best for a project to have an incentive to keep it going no matter what until you just can’t do it anymore and it peters out, I’ve seen it happen so much.
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…thanks for the nightmare fuel. I’m going to need at least half a dozen children’s storybooks to brush clean that image from my brain.
I like to describe it more like an idea (which is also the reason why, for the most cases, I have no idea what they look like: they exist as some kind of shapeless, wordless, though-mass in my brain that I can feel rather than describe) which, frankly, I’d see much closer to philosophy than mysticism. But yes, it is a sort of a black box. You know what you put in (the prompts and situations), what you get out (the character action), and what the box is (your subconscious), but you don’t really know what goes on there. Some people just do think like that.
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Because I’m a narcissist, I think of this kind of thing in theological terms. I am the god of my characters’ universe. But I’m a benevolent deity. I let my little guys have free will, and am happy to let them surprise me!
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That’s part of the difference, but it’s certainly possible to create character-driven stories with a deliberate and methodical mindset, just as it’s possible to create plot-driven stories through an intuitive process, “feeling it out as you go” as you might put it.
Perhaps mystical was the wrong word, but this sort of talk loses me very quickly for the reason I mentioned before: there is no rock to be thrown off course, no little guy for you to give free will too. Those things only exist in your mind, and thus everything they do comes from your mind too.
Thank you! This is the explanation I wanted, and what I think I sort of knew already: what you’re describing here are subconscious processes. For the record, I think that there’s an argument to be made for making those subconscious processes conscious - for constructing stories and characters more deliberately in order to have more awareness of what you’re doing and more control over what you’re creating, whether the focus is on the plot or on the characters. But unless anyone has more to say, I think this is as good a place as any to lay this topic to rest.
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I don’t think I’ve ever come across a writer who’s as seemingly averse to metaphorical language as you before!
But you’re probably right. This has run its course.
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Just because it only exists in your mind doesn’t mean it’s not real 
or that you have a full control over it.
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I do, in fact, have something to add.
For me, it actually works in the opposite direction: the conscious groundwork becomes subconscious the more I get familiar with the story and the characters. My characters definitely don’t start that way, but the ones I enjoy writing are the ones I don’t need to consciously think about (not in a small part due to the fact I enjoy writing more when it flows without thinking about it too much).
But, yes. I digress.
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I enjoy and appreciate metaphors when they help with understanding something; this one (for me at least) hinders it. But if it works for you then great!
This, I suppose, is simply how we differ. For me, growing as a writer has always been (and still is) a process of becoming more aware of what it is I’m doing, from writing things because it “feels right” to asking myself: why does this feel right? What is this doing for my story, and what sort of emotions is it going to evoke in my readers? What alternative ways are there of creating the effect I’m aiming for? But not everyone thinks like me; maybe I just need to remind myself of that.
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Just have to throw this in there…
Both of the above comments fit how I write very well. When I first come up with a character, it’s a lot of work. Most times, I am coming up with a new character for a specific purpose or scenario (or game!) I want. I kind of know what personality type I’m looking to have for them, and maybe a few defining qualities. In the beginning, I “control” them, but the more I write them, the more they take shape and form, the more defined their qualities become (and not always in a way I planned) and the easier it becomes to write them, as well as determine how they will behave in a certain situation.
I only get stumped when they don’t behave as expected (if you insist on some sort of analogy, then think about how software will sometimes have glitches that cause it to throw errors you never saw before), but then I sit down and figure why their behavior may be the way it turned out based on how they were “built” up to that point. Sometimes, their illogical (to me) behavior spawns something in their history that happened to them that explains why they’re being weird. Or, sometimes, it was just me wanting the character to do something that made no sense for them without “breaking” the character.
Warning, the following comments stem from a book that had some whacked out shit in it…
I listened to an audio book not long ago that explored the relationship between creator and creation. The author didn’t specify “God” or whatever, but it was more of a broad sense of creation. He had an interesting, if very different take, on the whole thing and said that, when a creator first “creates” a thing, they have to take themselves down to the level of that thing to understand it, to get to know it, and to help nurture its growth. As it grows, it takes on a life of its own and requires less effort and attention from its “creator” to be sustained. I can’t remember all of it, but he used plants (growing from a seed) as an example, and even paintings and the like (how an artist has to work hard in the beginning to start it, but when it reaches a point, it’s like the artist is on auto-pilot because the painting has taken on its own form then).
It may sound like bullshit, and like there’s no logic in it, but there is. Even when you’re writing a complex computer program, it’s much harder in the beginning to build it than it is to maintain it or to keep it going once the foundation is solid. Until things get deprecated, anyway…
Flip that and you have what I’m talking about. If it feels “wrong” for a character to do something I had planned, then I have to ask why it feels wrong. Is it because it doesn’t fit the character? Is it due to a flaw in my plans? I have to figure it out before I can move forward. Worse is when both the plot and the characters feel wrong–then it takes some serious consideration and reworking to make things right.
I know I came off somewhat bitchy before complaining about plot-driven “drivel” but it’s a thing for me. I absolutely despise plot driven stories where the characters are bland, act like 2-D cartoons, and aren’t relatable because any Joe Schmoe could be stuck into their place. I have yet to read plot-driven material that made me actually care enough about the characters to keep reading. I’ve seen a mix of the two, where it was more plot-driven than character driven, but the characters were enough to keep me interested (while rolling my eyes and complaining about how utterly stupid they seem and how they aren’t consistent enough to be believable).
So it’s a personal beef of mine. It’s one reason I don’t play stat raisers on CoG–I find them shallow and boring. If I just want to shoot/stab things and have no story, I’ll play a video game (I can deal with it more there because I make up my own damned stories as I go along). But, if I’m going to read–even if it’s reading IF–I need characters I care about. And an MC that doesn’t make me want to smash my head into a wall every time they speak.
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So as I understand it, in these scenarios you will have subconsciously assigned some trait to them that you weren’t fully aware of, which then comes to the fore when you consider how they might act in a given situation. The characters aren’t surprising you, you’re surprising yourself. I realise I’m going analytical again, but that it seems is just how I make sense of things.
Regardless, this scenario is still utterly alien to me: even metaphorically speaking, my characters can never “surprise me” because they’re incapable of doing anything other than what I choose to make them do. And so are yours, obviously; I just happen to be more deliberate about the whole process. And ultimately I don’t need to understand your process; if it works for you, there’s no sense in me trying to fix what isn’t broken.
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Moving subconscious processes into the conscious realm increases control, and control can be good.
But control doesn’t always produce the best art (writing or otherwise). A state of flow is not usually a state of conscious control. The right balance between letting go of control and staying in control while writing will (on the evidence I’ve seen) vary greatly between authors.
IF is also not a medium that’s especially well-suited to authorial control, as we’ve talked about in some past forum conversations:
The more complexity you add to your IF work, the more likely that people will find stories in it that you didn’t write, even though you wrote all the words.
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Yes, and for that reason I would probably make a poor IF writer, and why I’m a poor D&D player and a worse DM - storytelling for me is about consciously crafting something, shaping every aspect of it the way I want. As for whether I’m any good at that, only time will tell - speaking of which, I need take my own advice and lay this to rest so I can get on with my actual writing.
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Likewise. All the best with your work!
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Pretty much any story where my character is unwittingly drafted into some organization or another inevitably becomes them trying to break free from a cynical, tyrannical group hell-bent on some nefarious objective or other, even if the actual stated goals of said organization are completely benign and my being recruited was a matter of unfortunate necessity.
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Good article touching obliquely on some of the things we’ve been talking about:
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That was beautiful. And slighly creepy, although that part may simply be due to how much I’ve been reading horror lately.
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Strange, because I’m the opposite. I don’t really care if I was drafted or not, I never take the option to say “I never wanted any of this!!!” I did. That’s why I bought the game. No sense dragging out the angst.
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That was an excellent article. And I agree with it 100%. Honestly, I think one of the biggest problem in any fictional media right now is the homogeneity of it. Everyone tries to follow the same rules and it stifles creativity. Furthermore, people have to create using the method that works best for them or they become unable to write, no matter how good their ideas may be.
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