I have voices inside my head. A lot of them.
Some of them are having ethical discussions, others are reading me stories, some are arguing who gets written first. There are parent-isms, and teacher notes. Cool manuscripts. Task lists I should be doing right now. Someone nearly always turns up music during the day.
It’s not so much about writing the characters so much as trying to get them to shut up so I can concentrate.
All of this independence within the head gives my characters agency when I write.
But how can “it’s all in my head” have so many variations? Authors write millions of words, and yet the characters put on paper live and breathe and go about their own lives. How other people be created from just a single person?
John Foxwell goes into some (very light scientific) explanations about how and why “Many writers say they can actually hear the voices of their characters – here’s why” in a The Conversation blog post 7/30/2020. Again – https://theconversation.com/many-writers-say-they-can-actually-hear-the-voices-of-their-characters-heres-why-139170