When I first started role-playing - which is where a very great deal of my creative energy goes - I was under the assumption that any character I created would thereby have to be a part of self rather than its own individual being, since I created it.
What I found out was that even if I came up with an original concept, quite often, I would...lack control over how it took shape. There have been many times I've wanted to make a new character, either for playing or writing, and had them go in such a radically different direction that I couldn't do anything with them at all. A few of them, I was able to adjust to working with in the 'new' form. I've also had characters whose desires would run more-or-less parallel to my own for ages, only to end up at odds with them over a sudden single decision. (In one case, it did immense damage - she took her leave of me, and most of my creativity and caring - about anything - with it. No matter what I did or how I tried to make it up to her, she wouldn't come back, and it was months, maybe even years, before I was really able to fill the void and start over again - and the 'replacement' was never actually expected or intended to be that. At least not to the extent she ended up being.)
There have been a few times I've said, "Okay, I'd like to fill a particular niche; universe, what have you got for me?" and had someone or something show up, tell me its name, and get to work. There have been times - too many to count - that I'll be thinking of someone who ought rightly to live in my head, and felt a physical presence - usually behind me, standing or lying against my back. Looking over my shoulder. I get 'feelings' more often than I get words - senses of "Yes, that's right," or, "No, that's wrong," and when there are words, they're...internal but seperate. I hear them inside my head, but they don't come from me.
It's more-or-less the same with fanworks as it is original creations. I'll get a sudden spark of understanding for a character, and have to go somewhere with it. If I don't, it won't leave me alone, and once I do - it's usually gone, at least for a while. Some of them drop in and out. Some of them only visit once.
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What I found out was that even if I came up with an original concept, quite often, I would...lack control over how it took shape. There have been many times I've wanted to make a new character, either for playing or writing, and had them go in such a radically different direction that I couldn't do anything with them at all. A few of them, I was able to adjust to working with in the 'new' form. I've also had characters whose desires would run more-or-less parallel to my own for ages, only to end up at odds with them over a sudden single decision. (In one case, it did immense damage - she took her leave of me, and most of my creativity and caring - about anything - with it. No matter what I did or how I tried to make it up to her, she wouldn't come back, and it was months, maybe even years, before I was really able to fill the void and start over again - and the 'replacement' was never actually expected or intended to be that. At least not to the extent she ended up being.)
There have been a few times I've said, "Okay, I'd like to fill a particular niche; universe, what have you got for me?" and had someone or something show up, tell me its name, and get to work. There have been times - too many to count - that I'll be thinking of someone who ought rightly to live in my head, and felt a physical presence - usually behind me, standing or lying against my back. Looking over my shoulder. I get 'feelings' more often than I get words - senses of "Yes, that's right," or, "No, that's wrong," and when there are words, they're...internal but seperate. I hear them inside my head, but they don't come from me.
It's more-or-less the same with fanworks as it is original creations. I'll get a sudden spark of understanding for a character, and have to go somewhere with it. If I don't, it won't leave me alone, and once I do - it's usually gone, at least for a while. Some of them drop in and out. Some of them only visit once.