Profound Reading and Writing: The Phenomena of Character Bonding and Story Hijacking
Why do we adore our favorite novels? When a story grips us enough to be a favorite, some type of bonding has occurred. We connected to something as we read. This experience can go deep—for readers and for writers—and leave a lasting impression. What fascinates me is the crossover between fiction and real life, when stories or characters influence us to the point of changing our behaviors and altering our life trajectories.
Psychological, neurological, social, historical, and other factors come into play when humans engage with the powerful mechanisms of story. Think of a character from a book, movie, or TV show with whom you connected strongly. As that character comes to mind, as you recall your interactions with their story, does anything shift in your physical body? Do your facial muscles soften? Do you smile? Does a part of your body relax or tense or fire up?
“As anyone who has watched an engaging film or read an engaging novel knows, we invest ourselves deeply in the experience of living with those characters,” [Howard] Sklar says. “We tend to respond to them as though they were real individuals.” (1)
Readers reverse the direction of the crossover influence when they write fan fiction or discuss with friends the possible life of a character outside the known aspects of the story, or explore alternate endings for a story. Writers obviously affect the characters in their stories. I love when writers reveal crossover examples of their characters reaching out to alter the writer’s actions and life.
Suzanne Brockmann is one of my favorite romantic suspense writers. I remember reading on her blog about the conversations she has with her characters, and how they sometimes turn the stories in directions she doesn’t expect—even in directions that might disappoint her readers. In particular, her Troubleshooters series storyline involving gay FBI agent Jules Cassidy and actor Robin Chadwick sped up considerably when those characters insisted, in conversations with Suzanne, that they weren’t willing to go through the extended upsets she initially intended for them, because they needed to be together, in person, as a couple, right now. So she altered her plans.
During the writing of my novel Everyday History, I had a character bonding experience that spread tentacles of influence and revision throughout the story. I’ve heard from some readers of Everyday History that they were surprised one of the main characters was bald. He didn’t start out that way. Henry looks the way he does and has other specific traits because he reached out to me in real life.
About halfway through the process of writing Everyday History, I bumped into Henry at a bookstore. That’s how real the experience felt. I lived in Freiburg, Germany, at the time and I’d gone downtown to run some errands. As usual, one of the bookstores called to me, so I went in to lose myself and find myself for a while. Happy and serene after my browse, I passed the time in the check-out line by idly flipping through a container of book-themed postcards. I flipped another postcard and came face to face with—Henry. Indisputably. Unequivocally. Remembering that moment still makes the hairs on my arms stand up, all these years later.
Check out the postcard for yourself, here (Gutrath Verlag, photo by Ben Hupfer)—you can click on the postcard image to enlarge it.
Face to face with Henry at the bookstore, I yanked the postcard out of the container, immediately pawed through the box to find more of them, then straightened up and looked around. I wanted to grab someone—anyone—and share my great revelation. I wanted to make a scene, yell to the entire store about how much the discovery meant to me. But all the people nearby were either wide-eyed tourists or blank-faced Germans (they’re not being rude; they’re just private), so I settled for hugging the postcards to my chest, heart pounding, grinning like a fiend.
I consider the finding of the postcard of Henry a character bonding and a hijacking because until I found it (more accurately, until it found me), Henry wasn’t bald and he wasn’t shy and he didn’t have deep blue eyes or ears that kind of stuck out. Beyond updating what Henry looked like in the story, the postcard also nudged me to change and add to the storyline, by inspiring a scene in which Ruben, the other main character in the novel, takes a surreptitious photo of Henry walking toward him along a sunlit hallway carrying a stack of books, making Ruben catch his breath at the sight.
With that surprising postcard in my possession, I suddenly caught sight of a bunch of things that needed to be adjusted to make the story more... true. The real world interacted with the story world and both worlds altered.
Such cross-dimensional interactions between characters, writers, readers, and the story world pulse subatomic information into the collective ether and adhere to us as inspiration. They swirl around and through us, magical and important and always available.
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Another major story hijacking during the writing of Everyday History (additional examples here) arose from my discovery of James Morrison’s album The Awakening. I’d never heard of James Morrison, but when one of the people in a creative play group I belonged to shared a video of Morrison singing a song from The Awakening album, I was hooked and got the album. Already immersed in writing Everyday History, I felt the reverberation of the novel in the album, in the music and the lyrics and Morrison’s voice.
As a whole and in its parts, The Awakening complemented Everyday History’s themes and mirrored many of the emotions I and the story’s characters grappled with. The more I listened, the more I learned. So I kept listening. That album remained on automatic repeat for many months as the only music I listened to as I wrote and revised Everyday History. (This penchant for associating specific music with the writing of a specific book continued during the years I wrote my second novel, The Infinite Onion, while listening to the group Pentatonix.)
The Awakening hijacked Everyday History more subtly, more pervasively than the Henry postcard did. The feelings evoked by the album’s songs circled and wove through my brain and heart with a palpable sense of interplay. I loved how I’d be sitting my writing chair, lounging and staring into space, searching for a bit of inspiration for a tricky scene, or reaching for a better sense of the truth of the story, or sifting for the exactly right expression, and a word in Morrison’s lyrics would deliver, right on cue, as if we existed together in a bubble of shared reverence for the creative process. Those call-and-response incidents occurred many times. They were spooky and perfect.
Everyday History would be a different story, less connected to the place where all things meet and all things are equal and all things have meaning, if it weren’t for the postcard of Henry or James Morrison’s album coming into my awareness. I can’t thank them enough for capturing my attention, for demonstrating the found in profound.
The phenomena of character connections and story hijackings remind me to stay open to inspiration’s pervasive presence. No matter where we are or what we’re doing, we interweave with everything. Separation is the illusion.
From the simple act of opening a book and beginning to read, or typing words to engage with a story, we touch the edge of the web and ripple a message: I’m here. Find me.
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(1) Rachel Nuwer, “The Psychology of Character Bonding: Why We Feel a Real Connection to Actors,” The Credits, Motion Picture Association, July 15, 2013, Link.
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Alice Archer is the author of the literary romance novels Everyday History and The Infinite Onion. You can subscribe to her newsletter to receive a free story, notification of new articles and books, and more. She also writes nonfiction for quiet people as author Grace Kerina.
Read more about Everyday History, Reading, Storycraft, The Infinite Onion