Try not to become disappointed if someone doesn't like a story you've written. Stick up for your ideas, but listen to what other people say, too. They might have good advice.
Margaret MahyRead
It can certainly happen that characters in more sophisticated stories can 'take over' as they develop and change the author's original ideas. Well, it certainly happens to me at times.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Characters in stories can evolve beyond their creators' original intentions.
This quote highlights the dynamic nature of storytelling, where characters may shift and grow in unexpected ways, leading to changes in the narrative that reflect their development. It emphasizes the collaborative process between the author and their characters, suggesting that storytelling can be a living dialogue rather than a rigid plan.
Themes
CharactersStorytellingCreativityNarrativeAuthor
In practice
Example use cases
During a writing workshop, this quote could inspire writers to let their characters guide the story.
More from Margaret Mahy
All quotes →Being a librarian certainly helped me with my writing because it made me even more of a reader, and I was always an enthusiastic reader. Writing and reading seem to me to be different aspects of a single imaginative act.
Margaret MahyRead
By the time ordinary life asserted itself once more, I would feel I had already lived for a while in some other lifetime, that I had even taken over someone else's life.
Margaret MahyRead
Of course there are big differences in length and character and vocabulary, but each level has its particular pleasures when it comes to the words one can use and the way one uses them.
Margaret MahyRead
When you are reading, someone has done a lot of work on your behalf, someone has had ideas and has then written and corrected and improved them so that they can be shared.
Margaret MahyRead
Perhaps every time anyone is praised it means that someone else somewhere is going to be ignored
Margaret MahyRead
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