I do believe that characters in novels belong to their writers and their readers pretty equally. I've learned a lot of things about the characters I write from people who read about them. Readers expand them in ways I don't think of and take them to places I can't go.

A good novel, one which entices the author as much as it beckons the reader.

Eliot was scornful of idle women readers who imagined themselves the heroines of French novels, and of self-regarding folk who saw themselves in the most admirable character in a novel, and she hoped for more nuanced engagement from her own readers. Even so, all readers make books over in their own image, and according to their own experience.

I was supposed to write a romantic comedy, but my characters broke up.

There's power in stories, though. That's all history is: the best tales. The ones that last. Might as well be mine.

Look seeker, if you love a character, you give them pain, ruin their lives, make them suffer. Maybe even throw in a heroic death!