Real narrative lets characters transform autonomously rather than being fixed by authorial fiat

Evidence

Thus the first false, one would like to say inauthentic, impulse of the novelists is to want to decide, to settle once and for all the contours, the features, of their characters by fiat: as though in real life people did not stand for us as unconscious symbols, leading a second life in our fantasies of which we are only gradually, only partially, aware; as though the very interest of storytelling itself were not the slow, autonomous transformation of the characters under their own momentum, before our very eyes, the narrative process thus coming to resemble a kind of inner meditation, rather than a newspaper communiqué. — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 203

Categorization

• XREF: Contrasts with the familiar 19th-century omniscient-narrator tradition and aligns with Sartre’s critique of psychological determinism in fiction. — connects to: Individualist acting methods subordinate narrative form to autonomous character; Fictional characters can develop an autonomous emotional reality during creation — Hilary Mantel, A Memoir of My Former Self- A Life in…, 177; Fiction writers can develop genuine nausea and crisis over the artificiality of made-up narrative (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Fictional characters can develop an autonomous emotional reality during creation #corroborates (0.92) — Hilary Mantel, A Memoir of My Former Self- A Life in…, 177
• Individualist acting methods subordinate narrative form to autonomous character #corroborates (0.85)
• Fiction writers can develop genuine nausea and crisis over the artificiality of made-up narrative #corroborates (0.78)