Author Insight: Bookish Battles

What is the worst fight you've ever had with a character?

"I pretty much end up hating all my characters by the time I'm done writing about them--in fact, I can't read my finished books at all.- Elizabeth Scott, author of Grace.

"Vera won't stop slurping her coffee." - Heidi Kling, author of Sea.

"I've never had an actual fight with a character, but I have resisted a few times when something changes. I had a character show up on a page at random, and basically took over the story for the next twenty pages. I tried to push her out, and instead she became one of the main characters." - Scott Tracey, author of Witch Eyes.

"The worst fight I've had with a character is probably Indigo in Indigo Blues. I wanted her to look at Adam, her ex, in a different light. She's stubborn and it was hard for her to see that he had grown." - Danielle Joseph, author of Indigo Blues.

"That’s a good question. My characters fight with me, sometimes. Sometimes they don’t want to be written. Then we all have to stop speaking and take a break from each other until we can come back and work things out again. We always do, eventually." - Margaret Stohl, co-author of Beautiful Creatures.

"Ha! I love this question. My worst fight yet was with one of my protagonists, Savitri, on my current work in progress, Bidden. She gave me nothing month after long month. When I cut her out entirely, she pipped up finally and started talking. I was frustrated enough with her at that point that letting her back in the narrative took some persuading on her part." - Swati Avashti, author of Split.

"If by fight you mean a character that made me gnash my teeth over their obstinate nature, then that would have to be the murderer behind the mystery in Other. Coming up with sufficiently creepy, sneaky motives that weren't completely obvious was tough. Clearly my mind isn't criminal enough." - Karen Kincy, author of Other.

"My worst fights are always with my villains. Most of the time, they just don't want to be bad enough and I have to convince them that they really do need to pull out all the stops and do something terrible. The hardest part is coming up with a motivation serious enough to make them seem terrible and reasonable at the same time." - Brenna Yovanoff, author of The Replacement.

"When I tried to start writing the sequel to The Dark Divine (The Lost Saint) my MC was very silent and I struggled for many weeks to even write a word. But once I figured out why there needed to be a sequel and what my MC’s motivation was, she had A LOT to say—enough that there will now be a third Dark Divine book." - Bree Despain, author of The Dark Divine.

"The worst fight I had with a character would be a toss-up between Ellie and Will, the main characters from Angelfire, in Angelfire’s sequel Wings of the Wicked. I had to make Will do something that I really didn’t want him to do, something that turned my view of him upside down, but it had to be done. With Ellie, she is forced to face the mortality of her own self and those around her in ways that would break even the strongest individual, and it was a fight to keep her going through it all." - Courtney Allison Moulton, author of Angelfire.

"It was Thorn in The Black Ship. He kept trying to die. I have one point of view character in the book and he incessantly gets into terrible trouble and I can’t just let the gods step in and rescue him. There were a couple of times I didn’t think I’d ever get to the end of the book with a narrator. I wanted to kill him just out of spite. But it all worked out and The Black Ship turned out to be my of my favorite books." - Diana Pharaoh Francis, author of Bitter Night.

"It's hard to say. Once the 'fight' with a character is over, I can usually move on and forgive and forget. Probably the worst fights are whichever ones are happening in the present, you know?" - Mindi Scott, author of Freefall.

"I don't tend to fight with characters, because I follow their lead. If they are insistent on doing something, they usually know why, and they'll reveal it to me. " - Diana Peterfreund, author of Rampant.

"My biggest problem with my characters is that I totally hate hurting them. But conflict is what makes a story really involving. Sometimes you've just got to do what you've got to do. " - Anastasia Hopcus, author of Shadow Hills.

"We don’t fight! We love each other. Usually, I end up mediating between the characters and my beta readers, who often get into scrapes. They’re naughty—the betas, that is." - Michelle Hodkin, author of The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer.

"Oh, Hope McDaniels in Selling Hope was a slippery one! She’s a con artist, and I sometimes had a difficult time with her decisions. It wasn’t until I made a 20-page outline of the book that I uncovered her motivations, and then she and I became pretty tight. (Though I still don’t know if I’d trust her with my wallet!)" - Kristin Tubb, author of Selling Hope.

Stop by Thursday learn about our other authors bookish battles!
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