Authors are not in charge

Whoever said authors where in charge of their characters was not an author, because the best characters, the ones we all remember and cherish, become real people not only to us but to the author too. People with hopes and dreams, personality quirks and idiosyncrasies, tragic pasts and hopeful ones, hobbies and loves and hates...everything that makes us human (even if, in Fantasy, not all characters are human). Therefore whenever we authors create a character we cede some control over our world away, for a well-made character will act as they will according to their nature and a good lets them do just that. We build the world, set the stage, and certainly have some control, more the more we write, the deeper we delve into our worlds, the more we find that we are just following the characters. It becomes not unlike being a Dungeon Master in Dungeons & Dragons: the DM controls what happens in the world, but not the players characters.

As Patricia A. McKillip once so wisely said, "Like water, tales find their own paths; they go where they are needed." Goodness knows that was my experience writing The Dragonkin Legacy: as a general matter I knew what was going to happen, but I was often barely a half-step ahead of my characters and then watching their reactions. Still, one need not take my word for it. I yield, as ever, the floor to J.R.R. Tolkien. 

"I met a lot of things on the way that astonished me. Tom Bombadil I knew already; but I had never been to Bree. Strider sitting in the corner at the inn was a shock, and I had no more idea who he was than had Frodo. The Mines of Moria had been a mere name; and of Lothloriene no word had reached my mortal ears till I came there. Far away I knew there were the Horselords on the confines of an ancient Kingdom of Men, but Fanghorn Forest was an unforeseen adventure. I had never heard of the House of Eorl nor of the Stewards of Gondor. Most disquieting of all, Saruman had never been revealed to me, and I was as mystefied as Frodo at Gandalf's failure to appear on September 22." – J.R.R. Tolkien, in a letter to W.H. Auden, June 7, 1955

In a different letter, he also noted that Faramir's appearance toward the end of The Two Towers startled him no less than the readers, saying: "I am sure I did not invent him. I did not even want him, though I like him." Case in point that authors are not in charge, for if the measure of greatness is creating something with a life of its own then the stories/worlds given life end up calling the shots.