Do any of your characters end up different than you originally intended?

This week, I had a reader ask me, “Do any of your characters end up different than you originally intended?” My initial response was brief, “Yes, all the time!” I would like to take the opportunity to explain that answer in further detail.

It doesn’t seem to matter how well I plan out a character before I begin writing a story, because inevitably they grow into something quite different than my original plan for them had been. It’s difficult to describe the process, but as the stories progress, the characters evolve, adapt, and almost seem to take on a life of their own.

In some cases, the changes work out well, and I am happy with the result. In others, the character takes on attributes that make them utterly unlikeable, and when that happens, I tend to scrap the story. Sometimes I return to that story at a later date; I have been known to rewrite the beginnings of stories multiple times until it feels “right”, and the characters are more believable and/or fitting to the scenes captured within the tale.

On occasion, I will keep a character that I’ve grown to dislike in the story for a while, then find a fitting way to remove them from the plot. One notable example of this is Janna, from The Moon’s Eye. Her character was originally intended to be very strong and independent, but in the end, I felt she fell far short of both characteristics. Janna’s departure from the story was written as a means to redeem some of her shortcomings. (I won’t go into details here, for those who don’t wish to read spoilers).

I wrote four or five beginnings to Hunted before I finally had the main character’s personality right. I have several versions of a werewolf story that I’ve worked on periodically, and I have written at least seven starts to The Caein Legacy, before finally settling on the current version (which I am very happy with). I have multiple drafts of a science fiction work I’ve toyed with over the years, none of which I am satisfied with at present – but I do intend to go back to it in the near future for yet another attempt.

Most of these unfinished stories are abandoned for one of two reasons. The first reason is that I need more time to iron out the full plot of the story, and simply set them aside until an idea strikes me. The second, and more common reason, is that the characters do not develop as intended, making me unhappy with the result. I have a filing cabinet filled with these stories I have started but have not yet finished. This does not include the probably hundreds of electronic files I have for the same reason. One day, I might come back to one of these abandoned stories and make something worthwhile out of it.