Your Characters Shouldn’t Run Off and Do Random Stuff

I keep hearing this trope about how your characters speak to you and have minds of their own. I never understood this.

As a writer, I either know what my characters should be doing, and where my story is supposed to be going and why, and the emotional notes I want to hit and why, and then I make them do what I want.

And If I can’t, it means I haven’t thought things through properly, or worked out enough of the back story for my characters, so I go back and do the missing work. I’m never surprised by what my characters do in my stories. They are as I write them.