Sneaky Characters

"This is positively the worst night in existence."

Have you ever had a character sneak up on you? A character who when your writing along all absorbed in your own sheer genius worms his/her way into the narrative, and the next thing you know they’ve not only stolen the scene, they are running the show?

Yea, that unhappy fellow over there on the left did exactly that. He, by the way is Yo, the God of the Sun in my fantasy novel that I am currently revising/rewriting/hacking to death like I am Norman Bates and it is Janet Leigh. He’s usually a pretty cheerful person, you just happened to catch him at a bad time.

When I started writing The Lunatic Fire  trilogy (or TLF as it will henceforth be called), Yo wasn’t even one of the original characters. He didn’t even come into conception until I was well into the plotting process and roughly a fifth of the way through what used to be a 150,000 word novel (it has shrunk considerably in its third draft). But then he started stealing the scene any chance he could.  I don’t think there was a chapter where he wasn’t at least mentioned four or five times. What can I say?– he’s a vaingloriously flamboyant character that thrives on attention. Now, not only is he is one of the three viewpoint characters, he is the most fleshed out of the three.

In his defense, he does make sense as a MC, as he is the son of the antagonist, the God of Fire (hence the title) and there is a lot of bad blood/ contention between them throughout the story. Yo actually ends up becoming the primary catalyst in the war in which the entire trilogy centers around. I am still reluctant to call him the main hero though.

Do you have any characters who have infiltrated your story? How do you handle it? Do you go along with the flow or do you sit them in a corner and tell them to shut up?