Letting it Flow

When I write, I typically have a handful of scenes I MUST write. I think about them while I write, I imagine them in my head when I'm trying to go to sleep, I live, eat and breathe these scenes the entire time I'm waiting to write them. A lot of times they end up being the only scenes I have any control over.

I've said before that my characters write their own story. Never has that been more clear to me than in the project I'm currently working on. Two of my characters, I'll call the G and A, have taken control of their story and are making it impossible for me to rein them in. I can either stop writing, or go with it. Every time I sit down to type, their story spills out in ways I never planned for it to. I had a plan for these characters. I had an ending decided for them. I still think the ending is what they deserve. But the path they're taking to get there is nothing like I imagined.

My project right now involves an ensemble cast, and these are two of seven or eight MAJOR characters, so logically, they aren't changing that much of the overall course of five novels. It's somewhat frustrating to find out my characters want to go somewhere I didn't intend, but overall, I think the novels will likely be stronger because I let them tell their own story.

Now that this course is set, I've had two people tell me they wanted it to go this way anyway, and there's only three people who have read the whole thing, so I think this is how it needed to go.

Does anyone else have characters hijack their books?