The Importance of Listening

When COVID started, I had trouble getting to sleep for a few nights because I heard two characters talking in the back of my head. And it was so vivid and interesting that I wrote it down the next day. Even though you're the writer, you want to be surprised. If you plot out your novel in advance, the characters will never come alive as they're just puppets on strings. You have to give your characters room to surprise you.