"My characters surprise me constantly. My characters are like my friends - I can give them advice, but they don't have to take it. If your characters are real, then they surprise you, just like real people"
About this Quote
Hamilton is pitching a kind of authorship that feels less like engineering and more like social life: you can nudge the people in your head, but you can’t make them behave. It’s a canny reversal of the control fantasy often attached to writing. The author isn’t a puppet master; she’s the sharp-eyed friend in the corner watching someone you thought you knew make a choice you didn’t predict.
The intent is partly craft advice, partly permission slip. If a scene veers off-outline, that’s not failure; it’s evidence the characters have internal logic strong enough to generate outcomes. Hamilton’s “advice” metaphor matters because it frames character development as relational rather than mechanical. Realism here isn’t about copying life’s surface details; it’s about constructing motives so coherent that they start producing their own consequences, even inconvenient ones.
There’s subtext, too, about ego and humility. By admitting surprise, Hamilton signals trustworthiness: she’s not forcing moral lessons onto her cast, not retrofitting them into plot points. In genres like hers - series fiction where readers bond with characters across books - that stance doubles as a promise to the audience. These people won’t suddenly act out of character just to hit a twist or wrap an arc. They’ll resist.
Contextually, it’s also a defense of “character-driven” storytelling against the tyranny of the outline. The line flatters intuition without romanticizing chaos: surprise isn’t randomness, it’s the payoff of doing the prior work well enough that the story can argue back.
The intent is partly craft advice, partly permission slip. If a scene veers off-outline, that’s not failure; it’s evidence the characters have internal logic strong enough to generate outcomes. Hamilton’s “advice” metaphor matters because it frames character development as relational rather than mechanical. Realism here isn’t about copying life’s surface details; it’s about constructing motives so coherent that they start producing their own consequences, even inconvenient ones.
There’s subtext, too, about ego and humility. By admitting surprise, Hamilton signals trustworthiness: she’s not forcing moral lessons onto her cast, not retrofitting them into plot points. In genres like hers - series fiction where readers bond with characters across books - that stance doubles as a promise to the audience. These people won’t suddenly act out of character just to hit a twist or wrap an arc. They’ll resist.
Contextually, it’s also a defense of “character-driven” storytelling against the tyranny of the outline. The line flatters intuition without romanticizing chaos: surprise isn’t randomness, it’s the payoff of doing the prior work well enough that the story can argue back.
Quote Details
| Topic | Writing |
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