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I met Terry Brooks (author of inter alia the Shannara books) some years ago, and asked him if he ever "gives the characters their heads", so to speak, when he is writing. He replied "No, never, my characters behave exactly as I want them to." This contrasts with Tolkein's approach – I understand when he was writing LOTR, Tom Bombadil was a sort of "organic" development; he didn't appear in any of his plans, and I don't remember seeing anything that I connected with him in Christopher Tolkein's compilations of Tolkein's earlier writings.
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