"I do not invent or create" I have heard an eminent
novelist say: "I simply record; my characters speak and act, and I write
down their sayings and doings." This author may be a fine psychologist
for purposes of fiction, but I question his insight into his own mental
processes. The apparent spontaneity of a character's proceedings is a
pure illusion. It means no more than that the imagination, once set in
motion along a given line, moves along that line with an ease and
freedom which seems to its possessor preternatural and almost
uncanny.[3]
Most authors, however, who have any real gift for character-creation
probably fall more or less under this illusion, though they are sane
enough and modest enough to realize that an illusion it is.[4] A
character will every now and then seem to take the bit between his teeth
and say and do things for which his creator feels himself hardly
responsible. The playwright's scheme should not, then, until the latest
possible moment, become so hard and fast as to allow his characters no
elbow room for such manifestations of spontaneity.
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