My title is a little bit misleading but I want to know if you guys think it's possible to fall in love with your character or world like you do with other peoples characters and worlds?

I wonder if we can create characters as an author and appreciate them like our readers would? The Harry Potter, Twilight, and Avatar characters and worlds are adored by millions of fans who wish they could jump into the story that created them.....but can we as authors feel that way too?

I'm not a very experienced writer. I write blogs about my world but the few fictional stories I create I just cant connect to like I can with other peoples. I don't want help connecting to it I just want to know if it's possible.

That's actually a pretty good question. I think that because we're inside the characters heads so much it might just end up being like ourselves - we don't fully "love" or "appreciate" ourselves as much as we would another person who is the same as us.

With that said I think it would be totally possible to love a character you created. I love my characters but probably not as much as an outsider would. Their worlds I am kinda mixed about, I love one of them but not the other.

But yeah, awesome question! Sure gets me thinking lol.

Thanks Bunny! It's a different perspective for sure.


What's everyone else think?

I think it's completely possible. I'm not a very active writer so I don't really have any characters that I love that much right now, but I think if I invested a lot of time and energy into building a world it would have to be labor of love.

Yes, or the only way to get the voices to shut up ha ha.

I think you could distance yourself from a character, as anyone who writes fiction must create characters that they don't necessarily like.  However, I would think you would almost HAVE to love the world you create.  Perhaps not so much in a short story, but if you were to write an epic novel, I don't believe it would work if you couldn't immerse yourself in the world. 

I find this particularly bad. I really love my character's personalities and that makes it hard to kill them. But I need to kill them to help move the story along.

The life and times of a horror fiction writer...

But if you create them to die, doesn't it make it easier to kill them?

Kimberley (07:45am Sat, Nov 10, 2012)

But if you create them to die, doesn't it make it easier to kill them?

You need to make the reader love them otherwise their death wont affect the reader. This inadvertently makes me like them.

I think we can love them, but in a completely different way. It could be like Bunny mentioned about how we love ourselves different. Or maybe we love our characters more like our children....like our precious babies. Our fans may love them more like their high school best friend or they may even fall in love with them and fantasize about being with them (or being them). It's different regardless, though.

Hmm, on second thought, I wonder if that love is ever superficial. I know some writers only do it for the money, so I suppose some of them may only see it as a source of income. I think true writers tend to love what they do and get really involved with their writing. I'm sure some are more whorish with it and don't really love their characters, though.... they simply write what they know will sell to make themselves a quick buck or two.

I don't think that any character you can create will ever really "pop" unless you love it, but like any love it isn't eternal.

Look at the movie/book "Misery" by Stephen King - Paul Sheldon started off loving the Misery Chastain character but after a while he just wanted to kill her off so he could go main-stream. She served her purpose - she made him a star - but now she was just weighing him down.

Put another, simpler way - to be a successful author you pretty much have to pimp your characters. Break them in, "love" them and then turn them loose on the world without a single backward glance.

I know it's ridiculous but I'm in love with most of my male characters and best friend with most of my female characters. I suppose I create likeable fiction characters subconsciously. That's why the fictional world is so captivating. You can create anything/anyone you desire.

You're essentially playing god in your own world! It definitely has appeal for all of us evil overlords.

I mean writers. Writers.

Bunny (01:24am Fri, Dec  7, 2012)

You're essentially playing god in your own world! It definitely has appeal for all of us evil overlords.

I mean writers. Writers.

We KNOW what you meant, Madame Overlord
Ryder13

Kimberley (01:55am Mon, Feb 15, 2010)

My title is a little bit misleading but I want to know if you guys think it's possible to fall in love with your character or world like you do with other peoples characters and worlds?

I wonder if we can create characters as an author and appreciate them like our readers would? The Harry Potter, Twilight, and Avatar characters and worlds are adored by millions of fans who wish they could jump into the story that created them.....but can we as authors feel that way too?

I'm not a very experienced writer. I write blogs about my world but the few fictional stories I create I just cant connect to like I can with other peoples. I don't want help connecting to it I just want to know if it's possible.

Funny I remember reading that Arthur Conan Doyle grew to hate Sherlock Holmes. Maybe not at first but, he apparently got fed up with Sherlock and finally put an end to him with Professor Moriarty but he did bring him back, due to, as I understand, commercial or market, reader pressures. He had other characters and other writings, including the not quite so famous Professor Challenger, and he was sort of locked into Sherlock and got bored with or resented being locked in with him.
Ryder13

I nearly always fall in love with my lead male character. I write romance, so it's probably that I write male characters that excite me anyway. My female characters I are either the parts of me I hate or the parts of me I love, so it will depend. But romance/erotica is a genre that falling in love with your character is almost a given.

Haffina (07:07pm Tue, Dec 18, 2012)

I nearly always fall in love with my lead male character. I write romance, so it's probably that I write male characters that excite me anyway.

That doesn't surprise me one bit!

Quote

My female characters I are either the parts of me I hate or the parts of me I love, so it will depend.

So for the ones where they are based off parts you hate.... do you end up loving those characters ever? Or do you despise them?

QuirkyJessi (07:49pm Tue, Dec 18, 2012)

So for the ones where they are based off parts you hate.... do you end up loving those characters ever? Or do you despise them?

I get frustrated with them. I feel affection for them, because I understand why they react the way they do, but I want to smack them around the head (pretty much how i feel about myself a lot of the time LOL)

That sounds really really frustrating. I just imagined writing about someone who frustrates me, as a main character in a story. I want to stab myself with a fork repeatedly just to get out of it. You must be iron willed!!

Haffina (07:07pm Tue, Dec 18, 2012)

I write romance, so it's probably that I write male characters that excite me anyway.

Best quote ever!

I was seriously depressed when I finished my novel. I wasn't ready to say goodbye to my characters and honestly, their world was more real than my own while I was writing.

Did you write about them again?

To be quite honest, I think that actually falling in love with your own writing and admiring your own worlds and characters requires having a huge ego. I mean, it's maybe just because I've never felt that way and I have problems imagining that; just like, sitting in front of your own writing and thinking "Oh my God, I've created such an awesome fascinating world, I'm a genius, I'll read it once more"? I don't think it's really possible (or at least I hope that people don't do that) and I think it'd be a pretty bad thing.

Have you fallen for a world or character of someone elses? I think it's the same thing....not so much that you read your own crap several times but more that you love writing about it/them and yeah. I suck at explaining!