Recently I was invited to be a guest author on Draven Ames’ blog. I was beyond honored as Draven had lined up some of the best authors around. His blog was profiling authors who had won numerous awards, who were well known and had sold tens of thousands of copies of novels. They had millions upon millions of fans and readers. Sure, I have readers, but after being in the ‘underground’ erotic writing arena for so many years, no one in the mainstream community really knows my name, or my work. I have four novels in publication, my own publishing label, and dozens of short stories, but no claim to fame. My biggest accomplishment to date was seeing one of my short stories hit more than half a million reads in just over 30 days. But having readers does not mean I have buyers, and it certainly doesn’t mean that I have any claim to fame. So I was greatly shocked when Draven invited me to join the ranks of so many prestigious authors who were all sharing their “Biggest AHA! Moments in Writing.” I felt as though I was way out of my league, but decided I would submit my article just the same and hope it would live up to the high standards that had been set by so many prominent authors.

“Wherever the Wind- and Your Characters- May Take You”

We’ve all been there. The character we painstakingly crafted to perfection through character biographies and outlines do a complete one-eighty after a few short chapters into the story. The proverbial bad-boy turns into a mushy pile of goo as soon as the leading lady hits the stage. The soulless monster learns to love after witnessing the heart-warming smile of a child. The greedy, selfish executive shows his softer side by giving his lunch to the stray dog that comes around from time to time.

One of the more important things that I have learned over the past thirty years of writing is that no matter how hard you try to keep your characters true to the way you have envisioned them, the characters and storylines will eventually develop their own voice. Your characters are going to show you sides of their personalities that you had not consciously decided to write into the storyline. Characters, even those that may not be homo-sapiens, are going to grow over the course of a story. They are just like humans, multi-faceted with many, many layers. The more human they act, the more they grow, the more realistic they become, not only to you, but to your readers as well. It is these characters that often endear themselves to us as readers. Learning to let them find their own voice throughout the course of a story can be hard to do. Writers are much like parents, guiding their creations along, nudging them back onto the right path from time to time. And like parents, it can be very hard to let your creations go to pursue their own lives.

Read the complete article: http://dravenames.blogspot.com/2013/10/wherever-wind-and-your-characters-may.html