An observation

I love listening to interviews with authors. Over the years I have found a common trend: characters are not created, they just are. Much like a casting director picking the leads for the latest flick, there may be age, weight, and race requirements for a given role, however the personality of the individual is not dictated. The author can pick the characters, lay out the setting and the situation, and then they remove their hands from the keyboard and let their characters react. They allow their characters have free will over the story they're writing and instead of writing about what will happen, they write about what did happen. This is important. After an author is asked about a character they often respond, "She led me" or "He surprised me when he." When that happens you can see the author completely removes themself from the actual actions of the character. I believe at times the author had hoped for things to unfold a specific way but despite the wrong turns and missteps they don't give up on their characters. The author reacts to the characters choices and nudges them down a different path, ultimately leaving the outcome and ending up to those characters.