Characters that talk back

If you have been writing for a while, then I'm sure that you have experienced the occasional character that talks back to you. The one that you actually turn in your chair to glare in the direction the voice in your head seemed to be coming from. You can sit at your computer and nearly feel the character standing behind you reading over your shoulder, or lounged on the bed or recliner behind you waiting for you to get around to needing them in the story again.

I have several characters that are so 'alive' that they even want to know why I have not yet named them in this post. ::nerfs Kevin:: (My writing buddies understand the reference.)

What is it that makes a character come to life? Where is the dividing line between a character that is just a name on the page and a character that you feel you have to mentally send into the other room before you do something that you don't want them to know about in the story.

Are writers just, as a group, teetering on the verge of insanity or multiple personality disorder?

I've been thinking about what it is that defines the two dimensional character from the three dimensional character and I'm not sure that it can be defined. Some might say that it is defined by how in-depth you work out their past present and future lives before you write about them, but some of the characters that have come the most alive for me, and others I have talked to, are characters who's life was discovered as they were written about. I have seen characters that have come to life so suddenly that the writer had to then scrabble to figure out what the character's name was and what they looked like.

One of my favorite characters repeatedly growls at me and my writing friend because the two of us created him, let him get comfortable with life, married him off to a very nice lady that he loved, then decided that "Oh, he had this past love that he was forced to leave suddenly..." That character *STILL* glares at me any time the subject is brought up, even after things worked out to put him and his past love together in the story. (He now lives in fear that we're going to figure out a way to make them split back up. It's a good 'keep in line' tool.)

The first character I had come to life was not even my character. A friend asked me to write a scene for this character that they had come up with and I immediately saw the life in the character, he seemed to talk to me from the first time I started writing about him. Back then he only had a last name and a vague description - now, five years later, he has an entire life complete with the lives of his parents, foster siblings, girlfriend and daughter all figured out. He has become one of the most loved characters in my little writing group and proof that not all characters truly come to life until they have found the right person to bring them to life.

So, what exactly makes them come to life? I'm not sure. I do plan to consider it further and will discuss it in later posts. In the meantime, feel free to share your own comments on just what you think causes a character to evolve into a three dimensional character that can talk back when they don't like how you are writing the story.