Turns out, the majority of authors actually do. Researchers at Durham University and the Guardian surveyed 181 authors at the 2014 and 2018 Edinburgh international book festivals. Sixty-three percent of the authors surveyed reported that they heard their characters’ voices in their head as they wrote. One said, “I hear them in my mind. They have distinct voice patterns and tones, and I can make them carry on conversations with each other in which I can always tell who is ‘talking.’”
The study also found that fifty-six percent of writers reported other experiences while writing, including visual or sensory depictions of their characters. One fifth of the writers said that they had a sense of their characters occupying the same physical space. Fifteen percent said that they could enter dialogues between themselves and their characters.
To the lay person, these claims seem outlandish and dismissible as an overactive imagination. However, the study stressed that the writers weren’t confusing fiction with reality, and that they were still very aware that their fictional characters weren’t actually real. And when the researchers polled the writers on their history with hallucinations, they didn’t score differently than the general public. So, as much as these results seem to be the result of hallucinations, they actually aren’t.
“Hearing voices and other unusual experiences are not in themselves a symptom of a mental health problem,” the researchers wrote. “This shows that vivid imaginative states—including losing control of one’s own imagination—[are] a healthy and safe thing which is important for how some people create fiction.”
But, even though so many authors reported hearing their characters “speak,” their experiences were still very different. One author said, “when my characters are running dialogue in my head I feel like a spectator, but with my own inner speech I feel like the one speaking.” Conversely, author Val McDermid said, “I do not think they act independently…they have the life I give them and no more.” One poet stated, “I can hear them talking in my head, and it’s a strange hybrid of me and a separate personality.”
These responses show differing levels of “alterity,” as the researchers call it, or “the extent to which [the character] was experienced as separate or apart from the self.” The researchers likened a character showing more alterity as an imaginary friend of sorts, capable of being spoken to and responding.
Another fascinating topic examined by this story was how much authors reported their characters having agency, that is, their characters determining their own actions rather than the author dictating what they are supposed to do. One author said, “they sometimes tell me that what I have mind for them isn’t right—that they would never behave or speak in that way.” Similarly, another author said, “when I’m trying to ‘put words in their mouth’ instead of listening they often talk back. And then we discuss things until I find what they would say.”
The study described agency,
The experience of the characters’ agency was often described as a sense of tension between the character and the plot, or as a sudden awareness of ideas for the plot or snatches of dialogue which did not feel consciously determined, or a sense of knowing how the character would behave in a given situation without having to consciously decide how the character would behave.
It seems as though this phenomenon, of authors reporting their characters having agency, keeps the author from letting their characters get out-of-character. If, according to their established personality and tendencies, this character would not run a red light or turn in their homework or fail to notice the evil monster sneaking up on them, the character in essence explains to the author that they wouldn’t say or do something like that.
Authors reporting that their characters have agency is not the same as a character actually having agency within the story, however. A character who is kidnapped by the villains and manages to rescue themselves by twisting their hairpin into a lockpick has agency within the story. The author imagining that that character is telling them that they wouldn’t just sit there and wait to be rescued because it’s not in their character is what this study means by the authors saying their characters have agency outside of the story.
So if you ever find yourself, while writing, imagining your characters speaking to you, saying “no, I wouldn’t do that, seriously, come on,” you’re not alone. A whopping sixty-one percent of authors reported that they felt their characters were capable of acting independently. This phenomenon, while fascinating, is clearly not a rare one.
Feature Image Via Pxhere