3 Ways to Take Charge of Your Unruly Characters

I have this problem where I write so many alternate universes for my own stories that I never get round to writing the main storyline. I'm an awful procrastinator when it comes to actually finishing manuscripts.

But writers finish stories. We have to. It's just what we do. You can't sell something half-written (and if you can, I want to meet your agent). Finish your story.  You owe it to yourself to finish your story. Don't short-change your readers. Or yourself. Rant/advice over.

But seriously, what can you do when your characters just have minds of their own-- when they want to do so many things other than what you want them to do?

Sometimes you just have to discipline your wild, unruly children. Especially when they'd rather go to Disney World when they should be fighting dragons.

1. Figure out whether your story is plot-based or character-based

If you're having trouble making your characters do what you want them to do, you probably have a character-based story. And that's great! But it can lead to plot bunnies, especially if you can't stop thinking about what your characters could do instead of finishing the main storyline. 

So what is a character-based story? It's when we want to know what the Avengers do on the days when they're not saving the world. We want Percy Jackson to work in a coffee shop. We want Stiles Stilinski to... actually, I don't know anything about Teen Wolf, so you're on your own there. But because these are interesting, super-powered people whose normal lives we don't get to see, we want to throw them into a mundane situation to see how they'd react.

Or maybe you want the most normal girl in the world to deal with vampires all of a sudden. Jane McPlain and Bob Normal now attend Hogwarts or slay dragons in their free time. Same concept, just throwing mundane characters into extraordinary situations.

The other type of story is plot-based. You could theoretically replace the characters with archetypes and no one would be any the wiser because the problems those characters have to deal with are just so compelling.

Throw your characters into a situation they can't get out of, then make them get out of it. Hit them with awful complications. Drown them in dilemmas, moral quandaries, and catch-22's. Then you've got a plot-based story. Maybe now your characters can focus on their real problems instead of starring in Attack of the Plot Bunnies II: Son of the Plot Bunny.

2. Write your self-fanfictions & AUs anyway

Or you could totally disregard everything I just said and write all those tantalizing alternate universes anyway.

What? You could. There's nothing wrong with your characters having minds of their own; it just means they're three-dimensional and not cardboard cutouts. (This is a good thing.)

Caveat: this might not be the best idea if you're writing on a deadline. In that case, it's probably best to follow the advice under the first heading up there. Seriously, what are you doing still reading this? Get your butt in gear and make your characters behave, pal.

But if you're writing for fun, have at it. Take your characters to to Disney World. Take them to the laundromat. Take them to the Moon. You love them and you want them to have as much fun as you do, so why not?

3. Plot the main story first, then go back to it when you get bored of AUs

Here we reach a zen-like balance between NaNoWriMonian deadlines and zillions of bunnies.

Licensed under Creative Commons; thanks, Wikipedia!

If you've been a pantser all your life, plotting an entire novel probably sounds either horrendously boring or soul-crushingly horrifying. But plotting? It's literally just writing down what needs to happen in your story.

If you're a pantser, that might suck the fun out of it. Maybe not knowing what to do next is exhilarating for you. But this is just a guideline. There are probably as many different ways to write stories are there are people who write them. How you plot your story (if you plot it at all!) is up to you.

If you write out everything that needs to happen first, you'll always know what to write next.  Which leaves you tons of time to wonder what would happen if your vampire-fighting starship captain (who is a werewolf) met Abraham Lincoln. On Mars.

You're welcome.

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Hey, since you're here, why not check out the resources page? You might find something cool. Maybe it'll even help you wrangle your characters.