I really have no idea. As I said yesterday, as you edit you will come across sections of the book you don’t even remember writing. The most striking thing about this is that the characters are saying and doing things that you would never say or do. They don’t talk like you. They don’t act like you. And they react to situations in ways that are very different from your own.
It is astonishing how good the human brain is at creating plausible scenarios out of complete chaos. But it’s a lot like what happens when we dream. You see some of the craziest things in your dreams. You see yourself behaving in ways you would never expect. So your mind is clearly capable of these thoughts. The challenge is to allow those threads of thought to float to the surface and capture them on paper. It’s a skill that must be nurtured. I’m not claiming I’m any good at it yet. But I do recognize the levers I need to pull to make it happen. Now I just need to learn the right order in which to pull them.
In some cases, it is very easy to see where the characters come from. The age-old advice to “write what you know” comes into play here. Some of the characters are very much acting the way I would act – they say the same snarky thing I was thinking at that moment, or they do something I would do, even if it’s not the most interesting thing for a reader to read. I would hope that this adds a touch of realism to what could easily become a host of fantastical beings living in a dream world. Maybe someday I will write that story too, but not today.