I don't know about you but my characters live and breathe. I feel when I'm writing that I'm watching their lives and taking notes of what's happening. I think I'm lucky in the fact that my stories play out like a movie in my head. I can pause it and picture a three dimensional image in my mind, so I can picture things with great detail. I have always had a great imagination and have been told on more than one occasion that I'm weird because of the things I think of. I used to wonder if they were right, but these days I'm secure in the knowledge that it is an asset to be exploited.
So I take the time to watch my characters grow, see what directions they want to take. I find that they surprise me, which is good because I get lots of comments about the story not being predictable. When I wrote my first adult novel I had the overall story in my mind and the characters mapped out, but it wasn't working. I took out one of the male detectives and gave him the flick. I then put in a female character and wow, she just turned around and said. "This is now my story, try and keep up." The difference she made was instant and dramatic, the story just rolled out in front of me, and she was right. Throughout the rest of the story I had to try and keep up with the pace.
This is probably why each time I sit down to write I love it. I saw a famous author in an interview once say that there are no surprises when he writes, he methodically maps everything out, so all he has to do is fill in the blanks. He also admitted it took the fun out of it. Well that's the whole reason I write, because it's so much fun. I don't ever want this to become drag, I want it to be fresh and challenging so I will keep following my characters into tight corners and watching their responses.
