What happens when characters have minds of their own . . .

If you're familiar with the writing world, or if you have a friend who happens to write, you will have heard that familiar exclamation, "My characters ran away with me again!"

Most of the time, this is a very good thing. It means that your plot goes somewhere new and exciting, and you have rounded characters that will intrigue the reader just as much as you.

Or, there is the second option: This character totally destroys the plot you had in mind for your book. For example: Say we have a typical fairy tale. Prince is supposed to save princess from ugly troll. Now, let's pretend the writer in question wants this to be a typical prince-rescues-princess-happily-ever-after-story. Nothing wrong with that (unless, of course, she's trying to publish this). Anyway, things are progressing as planned when WHAM! One of the characters decides they don't like the way things are going and becomes "difficult". Let's say, in this instance, that the prince is actually homosexual, but never realized it until he falls madly in love with ugly-troll. The writer never intended for the hero to be homosexual, but he is. And he refuses to be otherwise. Plot foiled.

I'll admit, that's a pretty outrageous example. Those of you who aren't writers are probably completely lost. How can a character control a story? Isn't that the writer's job?

Erm, yes. But when a character grows, things sort of happen that the writer cannot completely predict. For example, in Dragon Queen, there are all sorts of characters doing this to me. Drake. Mikkay. Lace. King Traigon (Jade's father). Honey. I have been lucky so far, however, in that these unexpected manifestations of personality have not wrecked my plot, but enhanced it. Whew! Thank goodness.

Drake pulled the first surprise. When I first began the book, Drake was just an ordinary human-dragonslayer. But then his eyes started to glow. He became really intense, and before I knew it--he was a dragon! Instead of being miffed, I basked in his glory. (And thankfully that happened fairly early in the book, so I hadn't even gotten to a part I needed to change.) But that's really the only one of my character's secrets I can share (as the rest have not revealed theirs yet to my readers on the WD forum and I don't want to ruin it for them). 

I will reveal, however, that Lace surprised me the most. Really. And I'm just dying to see what the forum thinks of her after they have a little insight into her character! Unfortunately, that's about 7 chapters away! Ahh!