Do Characters Learn From the Writer, or Does the Writer Learn From the Characters?

Many people would say writers create characters. For some reason, I don’t really feel like I create the characters. I feel more like I get to know characters. As soon as a character is thought of, it’s like meeting a person. You might know what they look like, maybe even what they sound like, and you might know whether they are shy, personable, or grumpy, but you still don’t always know a lot about them. As you write, you learn about these people. You learn their likes and dislikes, their strengths and weaknesses, and their hopes and dreams. Sometimes, if you’re lucky, you even learn their deepest, darkest secrets. To a certain extent, you control their actions by what you write into their story, but sometimes they will surprise you with how they react, and you didn’t expect them to do what they do, even as you are writing them. It is a strange phenomenon, but characters really can take on a life of their own.

This brings up another question for me. Do you teach a character everything they know, or will they sometimes teach you things? In my experience, it’s a little bit of both. I’ve learned a lot from my characters. This can happen in a couple of ways.

First of all, I have learned a lot by doing research so I can write my characters well. If they are good at something, or have to learn something themselves, I have to know enough about it to be able to write what they do convincingly. I have learned about electricity, first aid, quick sand, and all sorts of things by writing about my characters doing or dealing with them in stories. These aren’t all things I would have just looked up for the fun of it if I didn’t have my characters to give me a reason.

Second, sometimes characters have bits of wisdom or ways they view the world that have taught me things. It seems strange to think of someone who comes out of your own head as actually teaching something, but they somehow do manage to make my mind work in a different way to learn or see something new. For example, Dillyn taught me (even though I still have a hard time putting it into practice) that worrying when there is nothing you can do about something is pointless. You make sure you’ve done everything you can, then stop worrying. It’s a lot easier said than done, and I’m very bad at doing this, but I did learn that from him. It really wasn’t something I thought about before he started doing it. Ashlynn has taught me how to do things that are out of my comfort zone. I guess I had to do that before I wrote about her, but somehow, she has made it a bit easier for me at times.

Perhaps one might argue that those things were already in my head, and attaching it to the character just made me notice them, and perhaps that’s true, but if it is, it has still benefited me. I have still learned things, and perhaps relearned things that are valuable. If nothing else, it was the characters that drew these things out, so I think I’ll give them the credit.

What do you think? What have you learned from characters?