The magic of fiction is found in the characters...
They don't arrive fully formed. They introduce themselves to me like a casual acquaintance, they talk amongst themselves, and live their little lives. All is well until they say or do something unexpected and then, as the writer, I have to jump in, dig around until I can excavate their back story and figure out why. That's when the work starts.
Before then, I'm just being a voyeur. They go about their business and I watch and record as inconspicuously as possible, like some deranged, introverted creeper-stalker, salivating over their next quip, their aching heart, their troubles and their joys. Of course I can guide them, I can even take over - exerting complete control - but doing that makes them less valuable to me, less entertaining, less lovable. They bring me fewer surprises and there is less awe when I hold them too tightly; when I squeeze them or try to control them.
Sure, when they go too far on a tangent I have to pull them back, dust them off, stand them back up and let them try again from the point where they went astray, but I just give them loose guidelines - the general stuff - and I watch them stretch and fail, grow and become. I throw in challenges, I block their path, I sometimes watch them make similar mistakes several times before I offer them away out - a way they can't quite see on their own.
I let them suffer consequences, but still manage to find something precious in each one - hero and villain alike.
Being a writer helps me to better understand why God gave us free will. It would have been easier to wind us up like tin soldiers and point us in the right direction, but that's so mechanical, so stiff, so boring.
The delight comes in tending the characters, my whole little flock of them, and becoming involved only when absolutely necessary - to gently nudge (or severely shove) them in the direction my world needs them to go in order to show them - and my reader - truth.
