Doubt about a particular point of view on how to do character creation

Of course developing a character is quite an intimate process. But still, like a story, you can in fact have some tools that give you some sort of axiomatic path on "how-to".

There is a TV writer named Shonda Rhimes. She has an interesting, but confusing, point of view about how she created a particular character. She said that for some characters she knows everything about their lives; for some others she knows almost nothing. Then, she said something quite curious: "I didn't know that character X was violent until that moment".

My question isn't about the particular process of hers. But this "phenomena" that you (you as a writer, as a human being) you carry a character in your mind and suddenly you know something about her/his life. It seems that you have something "alive" in your mind.

Now, how can a creation of your mind (a character) do something that you don't imagine?

Because I suppose that when you read a book or consume some reference on how to develop a character and the author says something like "You must put your characters in situations to discover more about them", they're saying that your character must have some sort of "independent will, against the mind of their writer".

Answer

This makes sense to me because my characters act in very similar ways.

Have you ever been in a novel situation in your own life where you did something unexpected? Maybe you intervened when someone else was being bullied or threatened. Maybe you kept perfectly calm as the car you were driving suddenly spun out of control. Or perhaps you hit your limit and lost it when someone pushed you too far.

You might not have known you had it in you to act this way. Because you'd never tested it. Sometimes we surprise ourselves.

I know my book's characters well. I'm inside their heads. I know their hopes and fears and how they feel about the other characters. But I can't know how they'll act in every situation just like I might not know how I would act.

Even in more mundane situations, you may not know how they'll be until you try them. Sort of how the best way to know if you're compatible with a partner is to take a road trip together.

Do characters have independent will? To a degree, yes. They're imaginary of course but, in a sense, we the authors just birth them. Like with our flesh and blood children, they slowly separate from us and develop lives of their own. With characters we can always write them to say and do whatever we want. We have that control. But, as we get to know them better, some of what we imagined will turn out to be wrong.

If you are in tune with your characters, you'll let them show you who they really are. And you'll listen.