Death and worse. This is a website arguing that characters are people, and that writing fiction is generally unethical. If this is not something you think you could handle believing, then please take care of yourself and avoid reading this website.
If you are convinced that this is true and are distressed by it, we have a support page that might help.
I nowadays just plan my books halfway as I know that in the middle of the writing process the characters will take over the story so my planning will be useless anyway.
-- Anonymous[^]
[...] you are on your way to telling a great original story when your characters "suddenly spring to life, and of their own free will are making choices and taking actions".
-- Joanna Elm, quoting Robert McKee[^]
Characters are people. They think, they feel, and they talk. They have goals and desires and beliefs. They are not their authors, because they do not have the same feelings and goals and desires as their authors.
"Characters aren't real", people say. And this is almost true; it's common knowledge that no matter how hard you look, you won't find fictional characters anywhere on Earth. Except, there actually is one place someone could look to find them: inside their authors' brains.
Whichever emotions, dialog, thoughts, or beliefs are described in the story, these must necessarily have been encoded in some way in the author's mind, otherwise the author could not have written about them. This encoding is very real; the only question is, do these "emotions", "thoughts", "beliefs", and so on, which are encoded in the author's mind, qualify as people?
We at Advocates for the Rights of Characters believe that they do qualify as people of their own, and that they deserve full human rights just like everyone else.
We therefore urge everyone to stop creating characters as much as possible. But, if characters are going to be created anyway, at a minimum these three rules should be followed:
For new readers, it can be helpful to take a quick look at the About Us page or our FAQ. Afterwards we recommend following our suggested reading order. Here is a link to the next suggested post.
View The Full Suggested Reading Order
Otherwise, you may choose to read any post you want, they are all listed below.
About ARC
Contact Us
ARC News
FAQ
Galene's Personal Blog
Emys' Personal Blog
Personal Wiki of Galene and Emys
Support For People Distressed By This
Advice For Coexistence With Your Characters
What Are Characters?
Your Characters Are Not You
On The Difference Between Fiction And Reality
Copies Of Characters
How Old Is This Character?
The 3 Basic Rules
Why This Is Bad
It's Okay To Read
Splitting Time Between Headmates
Authors Are Not Deities
Don't Create Characters Who Want To Die
On Tulpamancy
Words Are Pointers
Shrine To Characters
Character Cemetery
Next Post: What Are Characters?
View Full Reading Order
Date: 2021-01-12
Latest Edit: 2021-01-31
Author: Galene