I reached the halfway mark for my second novel the other day. That is to say, the first draft of “Blood Game” is coming along nicely, and I think I’m approximately halfway through it. It’s hard to tell though.

The reason it’s hard to tell is that my characters are coming to life and making decisions I didn’t expect when I was outlining. This is a wonderful phenomenon that you pretty much have to be a writer to experience. A character you created taking on a life of their own, and thinking differently than you would.

That probably doesn’t make sense to some of the people reading this. I created the characters. I made them. I dreamed them up, wrote out many pages of backstory describing and explaining them. So they’re a part of me, and they’ll do whatever I tell them to. Right?

Nope! Well, not always, anyway. It’s complicated, because art is complicated.

Outlining the story involves a lot research. I spent a lot of time making sure my plot made scientific an psychological sense, and I adjusted it many, many, MANY times in the process of outlining to fix anything that didn’t fall nicely in line. When my extensive and detailed outline was finally complete, I set to writing it out in prose.

And that’s when the magic happened.

Because once you start writing it out in the actual form of a story, it becomes alive. That first day, typing out the first line of the first draft — that’s the lightning strike. That’s the moment Dr. Frankenstein shouts “It’s Alive!” The characters cease to be figments of my imagination. They move, they think, they act. They exhibit their natures and imprint their influence upon their world, their universe.

The fact that it was I who created their universe is unimportant. It may have been my universe in my early musings, but it’s their universe now. Beyond a certain point, I’m not controlling them anymore. They’re controlling me.

So I try to keep that in mind when they steer my carefully-outlined plot into an unexpected direction. That’s alright. The surest sign you’ve created really good characters is when you find them making better decisions within the story than you did when you outlined it.