The characters we're writing about sometimes don't behave as we expect. It's almost as if they have a life of their own and are trying to tell us that we're forcing them in the wrong direction. That we are, in short, asking them to behave 'out of character'.

When this happens it can completely throw a story out of balance and leave you wondering what on earth happened to your writing ability. Suddenly nothing is working. Carefully laid out plots keep on developing unforeseen twists and turns, and occasionally they stall completely for no apparent good reason.

Maybe the problem can be traced back to the character. There is probably nothing wrong with the character. He or she is a living, breathing, three dimensional character who readers will identify with and believe in. The trouble is, she's not supposed to be in the present story.

Very often the way you came by that character in the first place is more at fault than the character herself.

Basically there are two approaches to storytelling - the plot driven, and the character driven.

Plot Driven story

In this type of story the plot, or storyline, depends on a carefully thought out sequence of events. Event A must happen in order to set up Event B, which in turn leaves the field wide open for Event C. Each event must contain its own clues and pointers (commonly called foreshadowing) towards what's coming next, otherwise the reader either won't follow the story, or won't be in the right frame of mind to accept the story.

For instance, suppose Carl is going to murder his parents in chapter 3. In order for readers to accept this event as natural and inevitable, there has to be something in chapters one and two that will plant the suggestion in the reader's mind that Carl is capable of such an act. It doesn't have to be a big suggestion. It can be as subtle as you like, but it has to be there otherwise readers will close the book there and then and write it off as implausible, unbelievable or worse, badly written. In order for the plot to work, you need to create a potential murderer for your main character.

Carl has got to have some dark and dangerous corner to his mind that is going to snap in chapter three. If he doesn't have this side, when chapter three comes along he's going to look at you sideways, shake his head, and put the knife (or whatever) back in the kitchen drawer. Then he's going to go out for a beer with his friends. You're stuck with a partying lead player and a set of alive parents. Now what? It's no good sending him back for another go, because he'll do the same thing.

You have two choices. Admit Carl is not a murderer, and bring in Fred, who most definitely is. Or admit you (the writer and creator) don't really want to write a murder story. Let's assume you do want to write a murder story. Carl has to go. He's too firmly real already (in your own mind) to make him be something he's not. The only answer is to let him stand down for this one, and put someone else in the lead role.

Character driven story

In this story the sequence of events is determined by the character. In some ways it's easier to approach a story from this angle because you allow the character to dictate the circumstances and what they do about it. Problems arise when the character isn't someone you want to spend a lot of time with. As a writer, you are going to be spending a lot of time with your characters so they need to be people you can live with. Even the villains have to interest or intrigue you enough to make you want to get inside their heads and live beside them for a while.

So, if we go back to Carl, who won't murder his parents, and you really want to get inside the mind of someone who can and does murder his parents, you're not going to enjoy spending time with Carl. His story is a different kind of story, maybe a story about reconciliation where he will work through his differences with his family, or a story about separation where Carl will decide he needs to remove himself from his family. But you're not going to be able to write a murder story with Carl, because that's not who Carl is.

The first, plot driven, depends for its success on a carefully laid out sequence of events, carefully placed clues and pointers for the reader to pick up on, and carefully positioned characters who are going to behave within the prescribed set of circumstances you've created for them. You start with what's going to happen in the story, and then create the characters who will act out those events.

The second, character driven, begins with the character: what they like and don't like, what they fear, what they love, what drives them, where their passions lie. From understanding these basic character traits you build up a picture of the life of the character and from there you formulate the circumstances that are going to present them with the most critical conflicts.

There is no right or wrong way to do it. We each find our own preferred method of working and that becomes our 'right way'. Largely it's instinctive and requires no thought on our part. We just do what we do and rarely stop to analyse what's happening in the story creation process.

But when a story goes wrong, when characters start 'kicking off' and leading you down alleys you never planned to explore, or when your murder mystery turns into a romantic suspense, it can help to realise that there is probably nothing wrong with either your story or your characters. The ingredients are fine. It's just the way you're mixing and baking them that's not working.

If you're having trouble with your current wip - take another look at the characters and think about how you approached the story in the first place.

Then spend a little time writing from the opposite approach. Allowing characters to act and speak for themselves can be a powerful way of finding out what's stalling a story, or generating new ideas to get it going again.