Stranger than fiction

J and I went to see the film Stranger than Fiction yesterday. For those who aren't familiar with it, it's about a boring tax inspector who suddenly hears a woman narrating his life inside his head. He discovers that he is the main character in this writer's novel and that she (the superb Emma Thompson) is about to kill him off. As a writer, this was a really interesting conceit. I don't want to spoil it for anyone, but I actually found it a very moving idea, that one of my characters could actually come to life. How would I feel if I ran into one of them? Would I feel guilty about what I had done to them in my stories? Who are these people that we write about? I often wonder where the characters come from that pop into my head. Are they out there all the time and I just suddenly pick up their "signal" when I have tuned my brain to the right frequency? Or do I really conjure them up out of thin air? When, as I did on Thurs morning (thanks V & F!) I write an entire 1500 word short story, with a beginning, middle and end, and with at least four characters, where the hell did they come from? And now that they are out there, do they carry on with their lives when I am not writing them?

These questions may not be answerable, but I urge you to see the film. It has left me with so many thoughts about plot, about a writer's duty to her characters, to her readers, to herself. If you found out your main character was real, would you still kill him off?

Think about it.