Text: Solveig Hansen, 2025

Do authors truly control their characters — or is it the other way around?

Authors wield power over life, death, and fate — at least for a few hundred pages. Or do they? At some point in the writing process, do the characters begin to take control? And where do they even come from?

“They just appeared,” some writers say, speaking of their characters as if they were real people. That half-magical process — the emergence of fictional lives — has always fascinated me.

Maybe that’s what drew Maximillian von Niedersax to my door — or rather, into my head — one morning: a black-clad gentleman with the Austro-Hungarian empire written all over him.

“Write me,” he said.

“I don’t write,” I replied. But curiosity snuck in. So I wrote him — not in a novel, but in a kind of character sketch. A test. An experiment. What is it like to host a fictional person in your mind?

I was reluctant at first. But Max wouldn’t let go — and slowly, he came to life.

What followed became a 2,800-word essay on creativity, character, writing, and doubt. Here it is:

CHARACTER IN SEARCH OF AN AUTHOR

Meeting a fictional character: a writing experiment

Text: © Solveig Hansen, 2025. All rights reserved.

INTRODUCTION

What fascinates me about fiction is how authors seem to wield absolute power over life, death, and fate — at least for 380 pages or so. Or do they? At what point do characters begin to take on lives of their own, guiding the story instead of being guided? What happens if you try to rewrite their backstory? And where do they even come from? Writers often talk about their characters as if they were real people.

My self-appointed mission was to explore the writing process. I knew this would never become a book — at best, it would be the skeleton of one. A beginning and an end, with the story itself left unwritten: shelf fodder for the library of forgotten manuscripts.

It’s the birth of characters that intrigues me. Perhaps it was that spirit of curiosity that brought him to me — this man who appeared in my mind one gray morning and said, “Write me.” The one I later gave the distinguished name of Maximillian von Niedersax.

“Write me,” he said.

“I don’t write,” I replied.

“Describe me,” he insisted.

I’ve been a lifelong reader — ever since I learned to read at the age of five. The dream of writing was crushed early by teachers who read my stories aloud in class without my permission, and family members who rifled through my school things and mocked what I’d written. My poor character Emily Larsen took the hardest hits. I can’t fathom what petty satisfaction they gained from humiliating a child — perhaps it was enough of a massage for their small minds.

The words that went into hiding back then have reemerged, but I lack the patience for long projects or historical research. Like: How did people travel between Dubrovnik and Venice in the early 1800s?

Then there’s the editing.

No wonder red wine consumption is high among writers. Personally, I wouldn’t have the energy to walk around tipsy with fictional people in my head for weeks on end.

Besides, I’d fall straight into clichés.

If I ever write a book, it will be free of clichés, pretentious phrases, and superfluous sentences. Ideally, readers will get early hints about what’s to come — a kind of courtesy for the impatient — enough to keep them reading not to find out what, but to understand why.

I actually feel lucky that this character came to me. It’s easier than staring at a blank screen, waiting for something to appear. And yet, that’s exactly where I have to sit for the story to take shape. And even when I think I know where it’s going, it changes.

Writing is unpredictable. Sometimes the words flow. Other times, they lurk just beneath the surface but refuse to break through. That’s when the red wine moments kick in — until the words are ready to reveal themselves. Sometimes I find images so precise, so right, that I walk around smiling afterward. Later, during proofreading, the words are just syllables: au-thor, cha-rac-ter, Ve-nice. It’s in the space between them that creation happens — the exact point where creator meets creation and thought becomes word: Let there be light.

About creativity: There are at least two kinds of idea libraries, as I see it through a poetic eye.

The first is the source library — the one accessible in that sliver of space between sleep and wakefulness, between time and timelessness. That’s where you draw raw material straight from the well of knowledge. The insights run deep, but the grand ideas are fleeting and often vanish by morning. You have to grab the entire idea-package quickly, before the word thieves arrive — usually sometime between 3:00 and 8:00 a.m. Then stash it somewhere safe and unpack it later. Much like a Christmas basket filled with coffee, chocolate, Camembert, and salty Ritz crackers.

The second is the library of forgotten manuscripts. That’s where all unfinished texts go — yellow Post-its stuffed in overfilled drawers or pinned to corkboards in home offices. These abandoned ideas float freely, maybe even available to other writers.

Perhaps that’s how some characters just appear — fully formed, mustache and all. Maximillian von Niedersax might be one of those unfinished creations, dreamt up by a writer who never completed him but gave him noble features and a slightly vain personality. He took offense when I called his style “a bit old-fashioned.”

“Aristocratic, I’d say,” he corrected politely.

MAXIMILLIAN

Aristocratic Maximillian von Niedersax. A literary man in an epic tale — I knew that from the start. Had I been a crime writer, perhaps he would’ve said, “Write me — I have a murder to confess.”

I ignored him for a long time, but he never truly disappeared. He didn’t speak in my head — it was more like a persistent presence. At first, I used his full name: Maximillian von Niedersax. Then just Maximillian. Then simply Max.

When I finally gave in and agreed to “write him,” I already knew there was a woman in red involved. I just didn’t know how she fit into the story.

God, please don’t let him chase her across Europe, I prayed.

I didn’t quite know how to handle Max. He seemed so serious, so cultured. Out of reverence — and a lack of experience with fictional characters — I put him on a pedestal, which only created distance.

I told him this.

“I fart too,” he said.

I was so perplexed that all I could manage was, “Huh?” But I understood: to write honest, believable characters, you have to treat them with respect — no matter who or what they are: noble, rude, cold, kind. There was something about Max that didn’t exactly invite intimacy, but he was my material, and I, his pen.

I sometimes wonder: do characters ever feel superior to their authors — seeing us merely as scribes?

I knew that before I could write the actual story, I needed to describe Max and give him a backstory. I had to understand him. And gradually, the distance between us shrank. He stirred my curiosity. I found myself almost eager to continue — and suddenly craving a glass of red wine.

“The next time someone says it’s pretentious to talk about fictional characters as if they’re real, I’ll smile. Because I know better. I talk to my main character, don’t I?”

A STORY TAKES SHAPE

The first time I met Maximillian and he said, “Write me,” he was seated at the far end of my dining table. His forearms rested on the tabletop, fingers playing with the brim of a black hat. Everything about him was urban black and gray — long coat, shoulder-length graying hair, full gray mustache, gray-blue eyes. Timeless, yet something about him placed him in the mid-1800s. Let’s say 1845. He would’ve looked the same today — hat, long coat, ponytail, well-read, fond of poetry, black-and-white photography, and Bourbon Street.

My first impression: a gentleman. Calm and stately, but with a restless edge just under his composed exterior. He exuded an air of intellectual superiority that outsiders might find intimidating — even off-putting.

At first, I placed him by Lake Balaton. Then I moved him to Dubrovnik — because if I ever had to do research, I’d rather travel there. I wrote Dublin into the story too, just in case. If he protested, I could always invent a grandmother or a summer home by the lake.

Maximillian inherited the house in Dubrovnik from his parents and lived there with his wife, Brigitte, and their children, Daniel and Manuela. His father, a self-made merchant, had hoped Max would take over the family business. He didn’t. He inherited his mother’s love of literature and became a writer, poet, and publisher, with branches in Paris, Berlin, and London. His company, Maximus Publishing, earned a reputation for innovation and nurtured emerging authors.

As I learned more about Max’s past, he became less distant — a man, not a monument. It felt as if we’d shaken hands and introduced ourselves.

The library in his house plays a central role in the story. A brown room lined with bookshelves, Persian rugs underfoot, and a large window casting beams of light where dust swirled like particles of memory. Sun-dust, Max had called it as a child. His desk stood beneath the window. There was also a fireplace, surrounded by chairs and sofas.

This was the room where they gathered over five years — Max and three other aspiring writers he had met at a conference in Venice. He invited them to Dubrovnik.

There was Clara, whose whimsical children’s tales made Daniel and Manuela laugh.

There was gallant Hugo, who kissed Brigitte’s hand.

“Where does one find a woman like you?” he asked.

Brigitte laughed. Everyone knew Hugo preferred stylish young dandies. But he had to marry a woman — “a consequence of societal norms,” he later wrote. “And I was no better than the rest. Only in my poetry am I free.”

Then there was Isabella, who always wore something red.

“My rebellion against Catholic black,” she explained.

Forced into marriage to an older man by her family, she was soon widowed — “which saved me emotionally and financially,” she later wrote, unsentimentally. At his funeral, she wore a red garter under her mourning clothes. A cheerful widow’s private protest. From then on, she was never seen without some touch of red.

I hadn’t planned that detail. I knew there was something red waiting, but I had no idea it would start with a garter.

Their gatherings became a refuge — a space to test ideas and lament the constraints of their class-bound society.

“We navigated as best we could between social dogma and personal freedom,” Isabella wrote.

They saw themselves as idealistic souls with a duty to share their intellectual gifts. Over time — often accompanied by Brigitte’s fish soup all’Adriatica — they conceived the idea of writing their life stories as a gift to future generations. It became a life project, one that would spark inspiration and curiosity 150 years later, when descendants dusted off their ancestors’ manuscripts.

The group dissolved after Brigitte’s death in childbirth. The baby died, too. Sixteen years had passed. The friends remained in touch, but were never all together again.

Isabella and Max had always shared a quiet intimacy. Their letters continued. I thought they might become a couple — but the story said otherwise.

They met in Paris, when Max visited the publishing office to present a new author. From the podium, he spotted Isabella — red hat, red lipstick. Later that evening, she accompanied a slightly drunk Max back to his hotel.

“Come upstairs with me,” he said.

She declined with a laugh. And then he uttered the words he would never forgive himself for:

“You’re usually willing enough, from what you’ve told me about your artist friends.”

“Never did I think I could sink so low,” Max later wrote, shocked.

“The exalted Max descended from his heavens and walked among us mortals. His words hurt me, but I forgave him,” Isabella wrote.

“Get yourself a mistress,” she advised.

At this point in the writing, I’m proud I haven’t chickened out — because it’s truly a test of patience. The story unfolds piece by piece — not linearly, but in fragments, back and forth in time. And as it grows clearer, my tone sharpens, and the characters come to life.

The next time someone says it’s pretentious to talk about fictional characters as if they’re real, I’ll smile. Because I know better. I talk to my main character, don’t I?

There’s something seductive and obsessive about the whole process. Writer’s block? No sign of it. Red wine? Pfft — coffee works just fine. I enjoy the creative process now and no longer feel uneasy about having fictional people in my head. If anything, I feel a little sorry that my role is limited to merely sniffing around the author’s path — sketching out a story, but never quite stepping fully into it.

Back to 1845 — and Max’s birthday.

He stood at a crossroads. The publishing business was in good hands — those of his brother-in-law and business partner, who was, in many ways, better suited for daily operations. Max could now focus on literary quality.

He hadn’t written in a long time, and he missed it. Perhaps it was time to combine writing and travel? His children were abroad. He was alone — restless.

He ran a hand through his hair.

WHAT THE HELL DO I WANT?

“Crossroads,” he would later call that phase of life in his memoir. That’s when he came to me and said, “Write me.”

I often felt he was born in the wrong century — that he might have thrived in ours. He didn’t disagree. He had a longing for the future.

“But in another time,” he said, “I would still look forward. Always forward.”

He was always searching for something absolute — for ideas that could strike with such force they’d transform the world. Later in life, he began Genesis — his great book project on human growth, nothing less. But he never published it. His doubt was too great.

That constant doubt surprised me:

Was it good enough?

Were the visions too grand, the words too pompous?

Was he self-righteous?

He gave a copy of the manuscript to Isabella.

“If I ever sought the absolute,” Max wrote, “then I glimpsed it that night I sat by Hugo’s sickbed. When I stepped entirely aside.”

Hugo had been beaten half to death by a man who called him a sodomite and spat on him. When Max — with his sharp tongue and strong sense of justice — “coincidentally” ran into the man in an alley, he let him have it. A verbal lashing. Called him a lower being.

“Then I spat on him — right in the face,” he wrote.

Conclusion: “So much for human growth.”

On his 45th birthday, I introduce a letter from Isabella to move the story forward. She congratulates him and invites him to spend the summer with her and her writer husband. Clara and Hugo will be there too. Location: Lake Balaton.

A reunion. It feels like the right narrative device — a way to take stock of where the four soulmates now stand. So I send them there. A new chapter in Max’s life begins — but it’s not my task to write it. That I leave to his and Isabella’s respective descendants, Will and Julia, in 2020.

I leave Max at the crossroads in his library. He stands facing a bookshelf, sunlight dancing through the dust around him, flipping through something he wrote long ago. I feel an indescribable melancholy — the kind that often wells up for what’s past and gone.

I can see him, fulfilling his promise to the future — writing words that would survive him, follow his descendants through the trenches of two world wars, and inspire others to pick up the pen.

In my mind, I see him by Isabella’s sickbed. He shows her a photograph — I don’t know of whom. She hands him the manuscript: Genesis.

“No usual margin comments?” he asks.

“It should have been published,” is all she says.

JULIA AND WILL

WHAT THE HELL DO I WANT?

That silent scream has echoed across generations of Niedersaxian blood. Will is the latest. The year is 2020.

There must be more to life than writing about local football matches and city council meetings, he thinks, sipping yet another Guinness at his usual Dublin pub — The Duke.

He doesn’t yet know the answer lies in his own family’s past. Not until a woman named Julia contacts him and tells him about the old manuscripts.

They meet at The Duke. She wears a bright red scarf for the occasion. “Just a statement,” she says.

“Nice scarf,” says Will. “Very… red.”

I suppose I’ll have to invent an attic, where Will finds the original manuscripts.

“He was so far ahead of his time,” Will says of Max. “I hope I’ve got a bit of him in me.”

“He spat? Holy crap.”

Will runs a hand through his hair.

“Is that kind of thing hereditary? I once kicked the neighbor’s cat…”

I don’t yet know what happens to Julia and Will. But I know books were published. Maximus Publishing was revived. Will became a writer and publisher.

Maybe WHAT THE HELL DO I WANT? would make a good first line for an epic novel — one that ends with a new generation of writers and a pot of fish soup all’Adriatica in Dubrovnik?

AFTERWORD

One thing is clear to me after this writing experiment: to write with sincerity, free of cliché, takes full surrender.

Do I feel the desire to write a novel? No. Boredom wins out too quickly — and then the story loses its edge.

And yet, Max’s life touched me deeply, even though I still don’t fully know that complex man. I’m not sure what I expected. There were no dark family secrets revealed, no unsolved murders. Just the story of a life lived.

We, the readers, ask a lot of authors — to entertain, inform, arouse, inspire, and wrap it all up with an ending that makes us nod and say, That’s exactly how it had to be.

As for me, I’ll remain a reader. At the same time, I can sense a new story about writing forming in my head.

Title: Genesis.

(This essay was originally written in Norwegian.)

Illustration: Andrys/Pixabay