an odd but useful problem with writing

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I have written, or started writing, a few stories, and have run into an interesting, but useful, problem. In some of the books on writing I've read, one of the tips to flesh out characters is to come up with a "back story" for the creation of the character. I started thinking about these, and drafting outlines, mainly for my own reference and occasional use in flashback sequences or dialogue. These back stories then took on a life of their own, and became more involved, and now they are the focus of what I am writing and are full-blown stories in their own right, and since I am more seasoned now, they are even better than the ones I first began. I intend to finish them and try to get them published first, if I don't start doing back stories for the other characters in those stories first, LOL.

Has anyone else here run into this sort of dilemma?

Yup! I wrote a small part of my story only intended to take up 1 book. It now takes up four!

Yes, I put it in my book, which being four foot thick, is hard to market.

My characters are realer than anyone I know, but being aspiesocial, there are very few people I do not come to regret meeting. As a friend said, "You deal with people, you lose."

So I have imaginary friends, who have a back story, formative events in their lives, talents, siblings, parents, and a longer family history.

Then the meaning of their interaction with others, takes more of the same about the others. It is not the dialog, it is the story, but the real story is who responded and why, to whom, and how they would take it.

I am going to rip out your spine and beat you with it, said Sgt. Rock.
I am going to rip out your spine and beat you with it, said Mother Teresa.

Then there is the stuff people have been locked up for, but writers can claim as a business expense.

One of my characters came to see me, it seems that the part I wrote for them was all wrong. AS usual I had missed the point. I got the whole thing right, and missed the meaning. There were issues and conflicts, very different personalities colliding, resolving past differances through airing them, but that was not the point.

They were establishing their identities, who I will remain, the issues were not important, what was, was they were clearing the past so they could become closer in the future.

Frazer and exwife Lilith fight, insult, demean, undermine, and then both run to the bedroom for a night of wordless sex, by the time room service brings breakfast, they are using words again, which each is playing as slow agravation. It will turn into another emotional out burst, someday, and another trip to the bedroom. I got the foreplay right, but missed the motive.

The character who came is a very caring person, the other one in the chapter is more the type who becomes angry and wordless. I claim to have created them, and now I hear that they have always existed, found me and my key board, given me a story, which I keep messing up, because I do not think it out from each of their personalities and points of view.

The supporting characters have also filed a petition. Just because their parts in this story are small, does not effect their importance. I needed them, which shows they are important, they are as real as the major parts, and I have to put more effort into fully developing their personalities, so the little part they play, which is critical to the story, is as intense as the major story line, with less introduction, but equal importance. They are not subplot, extras, walkons, they are the background of stars that the major planets move through. Each in their own world is a Sun, each has their own planets.

Now there is talk of a Union. I hear things like, "The conducter is tone deaf." They call me Homer, I am not sure if they mean the blind story teller, or Simpson, I fear both.

Mine usually fight for story time and a love life. I'm bad with the love life part. Everyone is usually intense, obsessive and brutal. They usually end up decimated or dead.

IN my book all the main characters have something seriously wrong/or horrible happened with them, but i think it's funny cause everything they have is stuff that i have. ONe is the adhd/epileptic guy, his twin brother is bi-polar, his little sister is a child prodigy with an IQ of 250 something, and his best friend is severly abused (though i never was) but i have the same paranoia ans anxeity as he does.

my big problem with writing is the timeline, sometimes i accidently make it dinner time twice in one day. And each book does not go in order of time, it somewhat does but yeah... And I dont really have a set plot, every character has their own plot and they sometimes intertwin with the other plots.

I don't particularly like Professor Tolkien, but he did write a whole goldmine of notes, trajectories and tangents (which were then published with a few redactions & reorderings by his son) in order for him to build up Middle Earth, its peoples, its languages & its mythologies into something fairly encyclopaedic. This was, I suppose, to give his mental creation a semblance of reality. The trick is to create your world mentally and then set a relatively thrilling or meaningful (or the postmodern antiequivalents, or whatever you believe your audience would pay for...) story there. So write (physically, or mentally) all the context, the dust & the screaming, just don't foist it upon your reader until you've hooked them in.

My bassist (a slightly different artform, is music, but the principles are similar) refers it to the horses**t and truffles principle, which I think is a load of toss, but then again I suppose autistics do love what other people call horses**t...