How real are you characters to you? Ever hallucinated them?
(Edit- I cant fix the title but I said "you" instead of "your" ;w;)
I of course dont mean full psychosis, but I was wondering if anyone *feels* like their characters are real, *knowing* they arent? I've seen before, people will make posts online joking about their characters talking to them about the story. Like their character saying, "Why arent you working on the story", "why'd you give me trauma". And I've always felt safe in my assumption that they were just jokes.
I'm in the process now, of trying to write a plot and pitch for an animated series. For relevant context, Im chronically ill and have a short life expectancy. So Im trying really hard to make something to leave behind for my litttle siblings and friends. And I work on this thing every day, every night, so long as my health will let me. Wich is increasingly less often. And when I dream, I dream almost exclusively about my characters or their world. And when Im awake, its like they talk to me. Not in a hallucination sort of way, but in a way where Im just in the habbit of thinking of them? Ik why it happens psychologically. But it's more frequent/realistic now that my healths got me stuck at home. My protagonist will vent about something. Or an antagonist will explain the holes in a design for a scene, or monologue his ambitions. I hear "not doing me justice" a lot, or something along those lines from a group of characters. Its sort of background noise now. I play minecraft, and hear the friend group main cast have banter in my head about bed placement and where the cobblestone went. I used to do everything with music or youtube playing, but now I sit in silence or hush ambient. Half immersed in my laptop and half immersed in whatever conversation so n so's having.
Im wondering if other authors have this? I think it may be exacerbated for me, due to my being bed bound, alone, bored and stressed out. But I can imagine, surely other people "talk" to their characters sometimes. Or can very vividly immerse themselves in their world. I'm not really looking for explinations for what Im going through, just curious if anyone else has any experiences similair to this. Even if its not as extreme, or more extreme idk. I have no idea how normal/odd this is.